# A testament to Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: testament-formula - Category: Lexical (lexical) - Subcategory: significance-formula - Also known as: a testament to, testament to the power of, indelible mark - Status: Fading. Signal is weakening, usually because model vendors trained the habit out. - Severity: medium - Evidence grade: corroborated (named independently by multiple credible secondary sources) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-17 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/testament-formula ## Description A formula that converts any fact into evidence of greatness. A testament to says that the thing just mentioned demonstrates a quality, and the demonstration is never shown. Wikipedia files it with the puffery family, and three independent community lists carry it. Fading, because it is one of the most publicised phrases in this whole area and human editors now remove it on sight. ## Why it reads as machine-written The formula upgrades a fact into a verdict without an argument in between. That upgrade is free, and free is what low-effort prose is made of. ## Detection Type: deterministic (a regular expression, run as written) Scope: sentence ECMAScript regular expression. The build validator compiles it and tests it against this entry's own specimens. ```regex \ba\s+testament\s+to\b|\bleft\s+an\s+indelible\s+mark\b ``` Flags: gi ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > The response from the community is a testament to the power of building in public. People want to see the work and not only the outcome, and showing it costs a good deal less than most founders assume before they try it. Teams that share early hear the useful criticism while it is still cheap to act on, which is worth considerably more than applause. After, repaired: > Forty-one people replied to the roadmap post. Nine asked for the same thing, an export button, and it is the next thing we build. Note: Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. The repair replaces the verdict with the count and what the count changed. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Eulogies, tributes, award citations and retirement speeches use the formula because the occasion calls for exactly that move, and removing it from a eulogy would be a mistake. Sports writing and obituaries share the register. The phrase is also ordinary in religious writing in its literal sense. There is a boundary to respect with the copula-avoidance entry, which owns the copula-substitute verbs: a sentence that pairs one of those verbs with the testament noun trips that rule rather than this one, and this pattern deliberately matches the bare formula only. A reviewer looking at a hit should treat genre as the first question. In a wedding speech it is correct. In a product changelog it is a missing number. ## Model attribution Not attributed to a family. The phrase is old and its recent frequency is a corpus observation from community lists rather than a measurement. ## Platform notes - wikipedia: Filed with promotional language. Editors remove it as puffery under the same guidance that governs unsupported praise from any source. ## Sources 1. Wikipedia: Signs of AI writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 2. slop-lint, social-reply-register molds https://github.com/eric-sabe/slop-lint (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 3. is-this-ai-slop word and phrase list https://github.com/didrod205/is-this-ai-slop (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 4. vale-ai-tells, 111 machine-checkable rules https://github.com/tbhb/vale-ai-tells (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Fading: Fading. Named by four sources including the Wikipedia list, where editors treat it as a routine removal, and by the community linters. A phrase that trained editors strip automatically stops distinguishing between drafts. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). Built by [Herman Foundry](https://hermanfoundry.com) from Levi, Finnish Lapland.