The Provenance Seals · Anti AI-Slop, Anti-Slop, Human-Only, Co-Evolution — CSS-recolorable, CSS-scalable
Foundations
Four seals, two claims. Anti-Slop / Anti AI-Slop is a quality pair — does this clear a bar, and is that bar specifically about AI-origin mediocrity ("slop," already defined elsewhere in this system as a prompt failure, not a model failure). Human-Only / Co-Evolution is a provenance pair — the same question the terracotta/steel signal colors answer on the color-semantics page, now as a seal instead of a badge. Same mechanism as both icon sets: currentColor for color, a bare viewBox for size, no live filter.
The original Anti AI-Slop stamp (living-styleguide-illustration.html) uses a live stampF filter baked to one fixed red — right for a one-off hero mark, wrong for a reusable set. Here the worn-edge texture is an irregular stroke-dasharray on the outer ring only — permanently vector, fully recolorable, fully predictable at any size.
outer ring: irregular dasharray inner ring: solid, on purpose
The technique
One worn edge, not two
Only the outer ring breaks up — a solid inner ring keeps the seal reading as intact.
Rotation (−9° to −17°, varies per seal) does the rest of the "hand-pressed, not printed" work.
Same seal, five sizes, one CSS property — the text, ring, and ticks all scale together because it's one vector shape, not a filter effect layered on top.
26px
40px
60px
90px
140px
Scale
26px to 140px, one source
A stamp needs to work as a small corner mark AND a large page watermark — this is the same source doing both.
02
Color, live
Terracotta is Human-Only's default — because it's the same color that means "human" on the color-semantics page — not a lock. Same source, recolored.
terracotta (default)
ink
stamp-red
steel
Recolor
Defaults carry a reason, not a lock
A default ink color is a recommendation the source doesn't enforce.
03
The four seals — drag to resize
Anti AI-Slop keeps its original stamp-red. Anti-Slop gets coral — a related but distinct quality color. Human-Only inherits terracotta straight from the color-semantics provenance pair. Co-Evolution gets violet on purpose — neither terracotta nor steel, its own identity for a blended origin.
Anti AI-Slop
70px
Anti-Slop
70px
Human-Only
70px
Co-Evolution
70px
04
Card corner & watermark
The same two placements the original stamp used — a clear mark tucked in a card corner, and a large faint watermark sitting behind content — both just CSS opacity on top of the same source.
Field Notes, Vol. 3
Written and reviewed start to finish, no drafting assistance.
Page content sits over the mark, same as the original.
05
A second family — the certified badge
Same claim as Anti AI-Slop, a genuinely different construction: curved text along the ring instead of straight stacked lines, no side ticks, a tighter double ring, rotated the opposite direction from the seal family on purpose so the two read as distinct families rather than one drifting into five variants.
Certified Badge · Anti AI-Slop
80px
Certified Badge
Arc text, no live filter
The "CERTIFIED" banner and the two stars ride an SVG textPath — a real curve, not a filter effect, so it's just as CSS-safe as everything else.
Text inside a <textPath> takes fill="currentColor" exactly like ordinary SVG text — easy to assume it's special, it isn't.
Ported, not copied: production's literal red (#E8452F) was consolidated into --stamp-red so this and the ring-seal read as one claim.
06
Construction rules — for the next seal
The rules that keep a fifth seal consistent with these four.
01
One shared ring geometry, reused exactly — within a family.r82/r72, same stroke widths, same tick marks for the seal family. A second family (job 05) is allowed its own geometry; it just can't drift unnamed — call it a family, don't pretend it's a fifth seal.
02
Only the outer ring gets the worn dasharray.A dashed inner ring on top of a dashed outer ring reads as broken, not authentic.
03
Give each seal its own rotation, -9° to -17°.Identical rotation across four seals would read as one stencil reused, not four presses of the same stamp.
04
fill="currentColor" on the text too, not just the ring.SVG <text> takes currentColor exactly like a path — easy to forget and leave hardcoded.
05
A default color needs a stated reason or it's arbitrary.Terracotta for Human-Only borrows meaning from color-semantics; a color picked "because it looked nice" doesn't carry the same weight.
Where this set stops: five stamps for two real claims and two families. Add a new claim only when this system names one; add a new family only when an existing claim genuinely needs a second visual treatment, the way Anti AI-Slop just did.
Created for you, with ❤️ by Robert Evans· The AI Design Architect