How do you stop AI from producing generic slop?

AI has a look, and it's bad. Cards that change height depending on how long the text is. Items in the bottom right drifting around. The card with one colored edge on the left or top and nothing around the rest. Readers notice, and so do I.

"It'll make cards just different sizes based on how long the text is, which is obviously horrible design."

Why does AI design look so generic?

Because when you don't give it a standard, it uses its defaults, and everyone else's AI uses the same defaults. The fix is to give it something better to follow, every time.

My design order, from most to least authority:

1. A specific approved reference for this exact thing
2. The current brand system
3. An approved template
4. My durable taste (things I always want or never want)
5. The model's generic preference, last

Approved systems and assets outrank improvisation. Improvising around a standard earns no credit.

How do I build a design system the AI will follow?

I moved all my websites onto one design system, the one Claude came up with for a news site I built. Now they all look the same, same design philosophy, and I don't have to think about it anymore. The system is two things:

• Markdown instruction files the AI reads: what to do, what's banned (like one-sided colored card borders), consistent card geometry
• CSS design tokens: the actual colors, fonts and spacing

I'd like to productize it: a business drops in its logo, colors and domain, and every document and page comes out on-brand.

What about documents and Notion pages?

• Human-facing docs should be readable. I want a Google Doc or Word style document. Very beautiful, easy to read. I'm not going to read a raw markdown file.
• No walls of text. When I rebuilt my CRM in Notion, telling the model to avoid walls of text and use visuals made a big difference. The top model does design well. A smaller one doesn't.
• Inspect the rendered output. The AI should look at the finished page, not just the code, before showing it to anyone.

How do I stop slop in writing?

• Banned words. My reviewer agent checks for banned words and terms before anything reaches me.
• The out-of-state test. For local content, if a story's insight could have been written from out of state, it isn't worth publishing under a local brand. The value isn't that a Chick-fil-A is opening. It's knowing that intersection was already backed up. AI can't know that.
• Human on the front end. Against a flood of AI content, the differentiator is that a real person is behind the brand. AI goes on the grunt work. Readers and advertisers get a human.

What's the last line of defense?

A reviewer agent with two or three passes before anything reaches you: should an AI reviewer check work first. Put the standards in your agent instruction files so every build starts from them.