🔥AI checkers gone feral

🔮 AI checkers are the new horoscopes—mystical, overconfident, and sometimes just making stuff up. This one’s for writers & others who still believe in drafts written by actual humans (and like it that way).

This week’s focus: stay out of AI jail with proof and polish. Paste your sources at the bottom, send the redline, and let the receipts speak for themselves. Two tools, two habits, zero “Did you use ChatGPT?” emails. We’ve handpicked tools, tips, and a little humor to help lighten your load. (3-minute read)

🔦 Week’s highlights:

• Tool Spotlight: Readwise Reader corrals research into a tidy vault; Draftable shows every human edit in glorious redline.

• Sherpa’s Shortcuts: Two quick hacks to prove your voice is yours. (No footnotes, no drama).

• Sherpa’s Pack (free download): Polish your writing with Hemingway Editor.

• The Ridgeline news: A new $99 AI emotional support pendant; Google’s NotebookLM just got a brain transplant.

• 😬 Tools Gone Wild: A real essay about Grandma gets flagged 98% “robotic.”

AI tool spotlight:

Tool Sherpa explores the flood of new AI apps and carefully selects only proven tools.

🔎 Glasp: your highlighter with manners

Why it matters:
Most web research tools act like squirrels, hoarding data you’ll never find again. Glasp behaves like a grown-up. It lets you highlight any article, tweet, or PDF in your browser and dispatch them neatly into Google Docs. You stay in flow, your sources stay civilized.

Who’s it for

• Freelancers who collect quotes faster than they write them

• Solopreneurs who live in Google Docs but hate copy-paste purgatory

• Writers (with clients) who like their footnotes tidy

Best use case:
Run your Read-Highlight-Export ritual:

1. Highlight online text using Glasp’s Chrome extension.

2. Add a quick tag (“clientA,” “pricing,” “AI trend”).

3. Click Export to Docs—your highlights appear with links, all pretty and polite.

Pros:
Works instantly in Chrome, clean exports to Docs, and public highlight pages you can share with clients (“Proof: I actually read it”).

Cons:
No offline mode yet, and tagging discipline is on you.

Pricing:
Free plan available. Paid from $11/month for unlimited highlighting.

👉 Try Glasp

🔎 Draftable: your irrefutable redline

Why it matters:
Writers revise. AI imitates. Draftable knows the difference. It lays two versions side by side and shows every tweak—what you cut, kept, and massaged—so stakeholders see craft, not chaos. It turns “did you use AI?” into “oh, you actually edited this.”

Who’s it for

• Writers juggling multi-round edits with nervous clients

• Pros who refine tone, not just text

• Anyone tired of defending good edits like bad behavior

Best use case:
Compare v1 vs. v2, export the comparison PDF, and ship it with your delivery. Every change is visible, every worry disarmed.

Pros:
Crystal-clear side-by-side view, works with Word/PDF (Docs via export), easy client handoff.
Cons:
Shows what changed, not why, so keep your mini change log handy.

Pricing:
Paid from about $11/month. Free online compare available.

👉 See Draftable in action

_{Disclaimer: Some links may earn us a small commission if you click.}

Sherpa’s shortcuts 🪓

Sherpa-approved hacks to streamline your workflow in today’s most popular AI apps.
 

⚡ Hack #1: The “Sources” safety net

Problem: Clients run your work through AI checkers, panic at false positives, and ask where every fact came from. You waste an hour retracing your own steps.

Solution: Keep a built-in Sources block at the bottom of every draft as your personal “I did the homework” proof.

How:

1. Add a bold header: Sources (at the end of your doc).

2. As you research, paste URLs here—no footnotes needed.

3. When you finish, label each with 3–5 words (“2024 report,” “brand site,” “case study”) and the access date.

💡 Sherpa Tip: When clients see tidy sources, they stop running your draft through AI detectors—and start trusting your process again.

⚡ Hack #2: The 5-point voiceprint pass

Problem: Your draft reads fine, until a jittery client or an AI checker says “robotic.” You need a tiny pre-send ritual that preserves you.

Solution: A 60–90 second checklist that keeps your voice intact and removes the machine-y scraps.

How:

1. Taboo sweep: Search and replace corporate filler — utilize, leverage, optimize. Plain form verbs win.

2. Cadence trio: Each section gets one short, one medium, one long sentence. Real writers breathe.

3. Callback: Echo one phrase from your intro near the close for rhythm and recall.

4. Metaphor lane: Stick to one image family (trail, not ship).

5. Hedge purge: Delete softeners like “in today’s world” and “it’s important to note.”

💡 Sherpa Tip: Save this checklist as a text snippet (in TextExpander, Raycast, or your notes app). Type ;voicepass at the end of a draft to instantly paste it in. From there you can easily edit the piece using these notes.

🏔 Sherpa’s Pack

Free stuff to help freelancers get an edge.

Polish without losing your pulse

When an AI checker side-eyes your draft, clarity is your best defense. Hemingway Editor trims the fluff, flags timid phrasing, and leaves your writing sharp but human. Run every piece through it once for proof you’re powered by caffeine, not code.

👉 Polish your voice for free

The Ridgeline news🏔️

The latest on how AI is rewriting the rules for solopreneurs and small teams.

Let’s trek:

🪩 New best bud?: Meet “Friend,” a $99 AI pendant that hangs around your neck, listens, and chats like a clingy coworker who never logs off. 🔗 Meet your BFF

🌐 ChatGPT launches Atlas: OpenAI just dropped its own browser, built to think, summarize, and search like a research assistant with no tabs or patience.
🔗 Read the BBC report

🧩 Google decks itself: Notebook LM is learning to auto-build pitch decks, because your notes apparently needed PowerPoint ambition. 🔗 Preview the feature

🧠 ChatGPT forgets on purpose: OpenAI taught ChatGPT to forget — wiping its memory to improve replies. 🔗 See the upgrade

🧰 Features you ignore: Hidden ChatGPT file summaries, voice mode, and quick-context prompts are quietly saving freelancers hours. 🔗 Find your secret weapons

☕ Final sip: AI’s next trick? Latte art that writes your résumé headline.

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Tools gone wild! 😜

Let’s end with a laugh — when AI tools take a detour off the happy path.

😬 The Grandma Essay Incident

A student penned a heartfelt essay about her late grandma, only to be flagged by the the AI detector as 98% machine-made—(because apparently grief now sounds synthetic). The teacher nearly failed her until AI was proven wrong by actual evidence.

📌 Lesson learned: Detectors can’t spot humanity, but they’re great at gaslighting it. Bring receipts, not apologies!

🧭 What’s Next?

Your voice is still your best marketing tool; just make sure the bots don’t claim it first.

Know a freelancer who’d laugh (and maybe panic) reading this?
👉 Send them this link → https://toolsherpaai.beehiiv.com

—Your Sherpa team 🏔️