AI Usage Isn't What I'm Detecting. AI Fingerprints Are.

A few days after launching Slopdar, I kept seeing the same comment:

"My website was built entirely with AI, but Slopdar gave it a low score."

At first, I thought people had found a bug.

But they hadn't.

The confusion came from assuming Slopdar was answering the question:

"Was AI used to build this?"

It isn't.

The question Slopdar tries to answer is:

"Did AI leave fingerprints behind?"

Those are very different things.

A founder can build an entire product with Lovable, Cursor, Claude, GPT, or Bolt, then spend hours rewriting copy, improving the UX, replacing generic components, and polishing every detail. The result may not feel AI-generated at all. I'd expect that site to receive a relatively low Slop Score.

Another founder can use the exact same tools, accept the first output, and ship it with generic layouts, predictable copy, default components, and obvious AI patterns still intact. In that case, the fingerprints are everywhere, and the score should be much higher.

That's why Slopdar doesn't just return a number.

Every scan includes the reasoning behind the score. I don't want people to blindly trust 72/100. I want them to see what the tool actually found and decide whether they agree with it. If someone disagrees, that's useful feedback rather than a failure.

Ironically, some of the best feedback has come from people trying to break it.

Every false positive, every false negative, and every "this should have scored higher" becomes another test case. That's how the scoring improves.

I don't think AI is the problem. I use AI every day, and I'd happily use Lovable or Cursor to build my next project.

What I'm interested in is the difference between using AI well and shipping the first thing AI gives you.

That's what Slopdar is trying to measure.

I'm curious how others think about this.

If you were building a tool like this, would you focus on detecting AI usage, or AI fingerprints?