AntiSlop

A blazing-fast, multi-language linter for detecting AI-generated code slop.

AntiSlop helps you maintain code quality by identifying lazily generated code, deferrals, hedging, and placeholders often left behind by AI coding assistants.

What is Slop?

AI models often produce code that works but is littered with signs of hesitation or incompleteness. AntiSlop detects:

• Placeholders: TODO, FIXME, HACK, XXX comments
• Deferrals: "for now", "temporary fix", "quick implementation"
• Hedging: "hopefully", "should work", "assumes"
• Stubs: Empty functions or macro stubs like todo!()
• Noise: Redundant comments like // increments i

Philosophy

AntiSlop is built on First Principles:

1. Code is Liability: Every line of code is a future maintenance cost.
2. Intent != Implementation: Comments like TODO or for now signal a gap between what was intended and what was built.
3. Speed is a Feature: Verification must be instant to be useful.

We believe that AI generated code should be treated with Zero Trust. Verify everything.

Pattern Hygiene (Orthogonal)

We follow a Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive strategy with standard linters like MegaLinter.

• AntiSlop: Detects AI shortcuts (stubs, hallucinated API usage, hedging).
• Standard Linters: Detect syntax errors, style issues, and bugs.
• Rule: If eslint or clippy catches it by default, AntiSlop will not cover it (unless explicitly whitelisted).

Comparison

Feature	AntiSlop	Standard Linters (ESLint/Clippy)	AI Refactors
Focus	Intent & Completeness	Syntax & Best Practices	Improvements
Speed	Milliseconds	Seconds/Minutes	Slow
Parsing	Hybrid (Regex + AST)	AST Only	AST/LLM
Target	AI Slop	Bugs/Style	Refactoring
LSP	Yes	Yes	Sometimes

Demo

The Problem: Your AI assistant generated this code. It passes eslint, clippy, and all your linters. But look closer...

AntiSlop catches what linters miss:

$ antislop --profile antislop-standard api/

api/metrics.py 2:5: MEDIUM [placeholder]
  │ Placeholder: TODO comment
  │
  1 │ def calculate_user_metrics(user_id: str) -> dict:
  2 │     # TODO: implement actual metrics calculation
          ^^^^
  3 │     # For now, just return dummy data

api/metrics.py 3:5: HIGH [deferral]
  │ Deferral: 'for now' indicates incomplete implementation
  │
  2 │     # TODO: implement actual metrics calculation
  3 │     # For now, just return dummy data
          ^^^^^^^
  4 │     # This should work in most cases

api/metrics.py 4:5: MEDIUM [hedging]
  │ Hedging: 'should work' expresses uncertainty
  │
  3 │     # For now, just return dummy data
  4 │     # This should work in most cases
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^
  5 │     return {"score": 42, "level": "gold"}  # Placeholder values

api/metrics.py 5:47: HIGH [stub]
  │ Stub: placeholder/dummy data detected
  │
  4 │     # This should work in most cases
  5 │     return {"score": 42, "level": "gold"}  # Placeholder values
                                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^
  6 │

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
📁 12 scanned, 1 with findings
⚠ 4 total findings
💀 85 sloppy score

  By severity: 2 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 

⚠⚠⚠ High slop detected - AI shortcuts found!

Zero false positives. Maximum signal. AntiSlop finds the intent gaps that syntax checkers can't see.

Performance

AntiSlop uses tree-sitter AST parsing for accurate detection. Regex-only mode is ~10x faster.

Language	Mode	Time	Throughput
Python	AST	4.0 ms	416 KiB/s
JavaScript	AST	1.5 ms	856 KiB/s
TypeScript	AST	4.9 ms	381 KiB/s
Go	AST	1.3 ms	1.2 MiB/s
Rust	AST	3.6 ms	606 KiB/s
Python	Regex	0.47 ms	—
Rust	Regex	0.54 ms	—

Scaling:

Lines	Time
1,000	10.5 ms
10,000	78 ms
50,000	392 ms

Benchmarks run on standard laptop hardware (Linux x86_64). Run cargo bench to reproduce.

Installation

From Pre-built Binaries (Recommended)

# via npm (downloads platform-specific binary)
npm install -g antislop

# via cargo-dist (Shell)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/skew202/antislop/releases/latest/download/antislop-installer.sh | sh

# via Homebrew
brew install skew202/tap/antislop

# via PowerShell
powershell -c "irm https://github.com/skew202/antislop/releases/latest/download/antislop-installer.ps1 | iex"

From Source

cargo install antislop

Usage

# Scan current directory
antislop

# Scan specific paths
antislop src/ tests/

# JSON output (for integration)
antislop --json

# Custom config
antislop -c custom-config.toml

# Run hygiene survey (detect linters, formatters, CI/CD)
antislop --hygiene-survey

Profiles

AntiSlop follows a Zero False Positive philosophy for its default core.

• Core (Default): Critical stubs & placeholders only. Zero false positives.
• trict (--profile antislop-strict): Maximum coverage. Detects all forms of slop.
• Standard (--profile antislop-standard): Recommended Baseline. Adds checks for deferrals ("for now"), hedging ("should work"), and dummy data.
• Strict (--profile antislop-strict): Maximum coverage.

# Recommended for most projects
antislop --profile antislop-standard src/

Profile	Focus	Best For
Core	TODO, FIXME, Stubs	CI Pipelines (Blocker)
Standard	+ Deferrals, Hedging, Mock Data	Daily Development
Strict	+ Nitpicks, Style Enforced	Code Audits

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions Example:

jobs:
  antislop:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Install AntiSlop
        run: curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/skew202/antislop/main/install.sh | sh
      - name: Run Scan
        run: antislop --profile antislop-standard .

Installation Options

AntiSlop is modular. You can optimize for binary size by choosing specific languages:

# Default (Standard Languages)
cargo install antislop

# Minimal (Regex only, no AST)
cargo install antislop --no-default-features --features parallel

# Specific Languages (Tiny binary)
cargo install antislop --no-default-features --features python,rust

# All Languages (inc. C#, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, etc.)
cargo install antislop --features all-langs

Configuration

Create antislop.toml in your project root to customize patterns:

file_extensions = [".py", ".rs", ".js", ".ts"]

[[patterns]]
regex = "(?i)TODO:"
severity = "medium"
message = "Placeholder comment found"
category = "placeholder"

Language Support

Language	Extension	Support Level
C/C++	.c, .cpp	Full (AST + Regex)
C#	.cs	Full (AST + Regex)
Go	.go	Full (AST + Regex)
Haskell	.hs	Full (AST + Regex)
Java	.java	Full (AST + Regex)
JavaScript	.js	Full (AST + Regex)
Kotlin	.kt	Regex Only
Lua	.lua	Full (AST + Regex)
Perl	.pl	Regex Only
PHP	.php	Regex Only
Python	.py	Full (AST + Regex)
R	.r	Regex Only
Ruby	.rb	Full (AST + Regex)
Rust	.rs	Full (AST + Regex)
Scala	.scala	Full (AST + Regex)
Swift	.swift	Regex Only
TypeScript	.ts	Full (AST + Regex)

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.