Date: 2026-08-26 Channel: Anyhouck (formerly Hard Calls; legal entity: Founding Journey) Thread: https://ryevalley.slack.com/archives/C07Q8FGH4CU/p1787756356060559 Source: Ben (U07561UQ90S)
Patterns to Avoid in Hard Calls Articles and Video Scripts
Structural Tell: Tripwire Framework Overuse
Hermes uses an “IF / BY / THEN” tripwire format in most articles. Ben flags this as appearing too frequently. The format itself is not banned, but its saturation across nearly every article is noticeable and needs to be reduced.
Vocabulary Tells
- “gap” - used too often; obvious AI marker (e.g., “the gap,” “that gap”)
- “whole” - often appears as its own short sentence: “That’s the whole story.”
Sentence Structure Tells
- “The X was never Y, it was Z” format is a clear AI signature.
- Example: “the expensive part was never the increase itself, it was the years of signal that went unpriced before it.”
- Consolidate these into a single direct sentence rather than the dramatic reversal structure.
Video Scripts: Comment-Bait Questions
Ben has removed comment-solicitation lines multiple times. They feel out of place, cheesy, and likely cause viewer drop-off.
- Example of the pattern to avoid: “Quick favor before we start: drop in the comments how long your current price has gone unchanged. I read them, and I think the answers are going to surprise you.”
- Ben’s verdict: remove these entirely from video scripts.
Implication for Hermes
These are live Hard Calls content guidelines. Any future blog articles, video scripts, or shortforms generated by Hermes should be checked against this list before being queued for review. The tripwire IF/BY/THEN framework should appear at most once per piece. The vocabulary and sentence patterns listed above should trigger a rewrite of the affected sentence.