AI Slop Is When You Put Less Effort In Than You Ask Readers to Spend
No AI Slop: A Manifesto
A group of engineers and leaders at AIE Code Summit 2026 drafted a manifesto modeled on the 2001 Agile Manifesto, arguing that AI output becomes slop when we pass it along without owning its quality. They value outcomes over output, understanding over speed, and human judgment over a model's first draft, warning that slop compounds as agents copy it and that review costs stay constant while generation costs approach zero.
Slop is when we put less effort into producing something than we ask the consumer to spend understanding it.
- gwbas1c
My favorite bit:
> What shipped, who's using it, and how it's helping them matters FAR MORE than lines of code, prs merged, tokens spent, or the number of agents running in parallel.
Sometimes when I hear shocking amounts of money spent on AI tokens, I wonder if someone's obsessing over the tech and forgetting that only the result matters.
- courtcircuits
> Improving the system over patching the output
This really connect with the latest conversations I had with coworkers regarding how can we review gigantic PR generated by AI. One way could be to ask the submitter to give their prompt as part of their contribution. This way it's easier for the reviewer to understand what was the thought process of the contributor and if this very process is sound.
Not saying that this way to review is a silver bullet, but at least it removes some weight.
- wauter
Could use a non-negative name. Just like it was not the ‘no heavyweight dev processes’ manifesto but Agile manifesto which was wsy catchier to reference, maybe yours could be named like the… Human-serving Engineering manifesto or something?
- svieira
A short formulation that I really like in the style of the original:
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We are uncovering better ways of developing systems by using AI and guiding others to use it responsibly.
Through this work we have come to value:
Human accountability over delivery velocity
Human dignity and control over unsupervised autonomous execution
Human augmentation over replacement
Impactful outcomes over raw code generation
Human collaboration over individual uplift
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
- carra
The manifesto circles around a central idea that it never fully identifies: whether AI is involved or not, all slop is made by HUMANS. Because the real cause of "slop" is that someone didn't care and published the first result they got, as if it was the final product. They didn't put in the effort to analyze what they got, improve on it and deliver a minimum quality.
And this is something that has always happened. Way earlier than current AIs we had already coined the term "shovelware" that was mostly a large quantity of sloppy software. We also had plenty of sloppy drawings at sites like DeviantArt. AI just made it way easier for slop to happen, but the ones producing slop are always people.
- Pannoniae
One sentence really caught my eye.... "We may still review a plan, design, or result, because if we don't, we just get the same output as everyone else."
Is getting the same output as everyone else bad? I'd say not necessarily. When you're making something, you might want to spend your "innovation tokens" on the core of what you want to do better. Then do a good-enough job at everything else.
To me it feels like the subtext in this is that making things more accessible is bad because then your stuff isn't unique anymore? I do not think this zero-sum / scarcity mindset is really accurate or helpful, IMO.
- drunx
You can't go in with fighting AGAINST it. You need a vision of your you incorporate it into life in the most beneficial way.
There is a lot of value in the fact that none engineers can build products now! Should AI products adhere to a certain quality standards? Yes! Should they be treated similarly as "human created" ones... Well, yes. Like it or hate it.
- CoolestBeans
I think my problem with a lot of middle positions on AI usage is that AI is viral. The more you use AI in a project the more you need to use it.