Sylou GitHub

Process-based AI‑use transparency.

Sylou is an open-source writing environment that makes human-AI collaboration visible and shareable: across research, ideas, structure and prose.

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Why Sylou

As it's becoming ever more difficult to understand how AI was used to produce a writing, with standard detection tools being occasionally unreliable and missing the full picture, Sylou aims to flip the problem, helping users gather evidence and proactively demonstrate how they have used AI, using a standardized framework that looks into the writing process itself: research, ideas, structure, and prose.

Sylou's whole point is to make human-AI collaboration visible for users willing to show this transparency: in a clear, visual, insightful and shareable way.

In action

Did AI write this? Insufficient question… If interacting with AI is akin to interacting with experts of all fields for any topic or question, simply knowing who typed the text misses the full picture. It is more interesting to focus on the underlying processes that went into the interactions with the AI.

The FLOW methodology

FLOW maps how AI assistance and human work fit together across the full lifecycle of writing, with each pillar assessed independently:

Find

Research and critical thinking.

Lead

Ideas and opinion.

Organize

Structure and argumentation.

Write

Writing and authorship.

Each pillar is assessed on a scale, from AI-led to human-authored:

Sylou is built to provide full AI-use transparency for your work and ideas, going beyond knowing simply who “held the pen”, but looking into the full underlying processes of writing; and it exists alongside your own self-evaluation.

In an educational context, Sylou also aims to help promote AI-use awareness.

Examples

FLOW Pledge Badges from three of the maintainer's own projects, as a radar chart of the four pillar scores, or as the FLOW collaboration style; a user can choose either. Each badge links to the project's shared FLOW report.

FLOW Pledge Badge for Runga Ahi: radar chart of the four pillar scores FLOW Pledge Badge for Runga Ahi: FLOW collaboration style 'The Strategist'
Runga Ahi — view the shared FLOW report
FLOW Pledge Badge for 'From Detection to Transparency: Sylou and Process-Based AI-Use Documentation': radar chart of the four pillar scores FLOW Pledge Badge for 'From Detection to Transparency: Sylou and Process-Based AI-Use Documentation': FLOW collaboration style 'The Conductor'
From Detection to Transparency: Sylou and Process-Based AI-Use Documentation — view the shared FLOW report
FLOW Pledge Badge for The Antlerbranches: radar chart of the four pillar scores FLOW Pledge Badge for The Antlerbranches: FLOW collaboration style 'The Researcher-Writer'
The Antlerbranches — view the shared FLOW report

Functionalities

A process-based framework: FLOW

Sylou is a text editor that helps you write with AI assistance and analyses the collaboration across four dimensions, mapping how AI assistance and human work fit together across the full cycle of the writing process.

The four FLOW pillars

  • Find — research and critical thinking (research it)
  • Lead — ideas and opinion (form ideas about it)
  • Organize — structure and argumentation (structure it)
  • Write — writing and authorship (write it)

The analysis exists alongside your own self-evaluation, if provided.

Shareable transparency

Shareable reports and visuals meant to give a clearly understandable snapshot of AI-use, with details, support and quantitative data accessible separately, together with your own self-assessment if provided.

Reports & visuals

  • FLOW reports and radar charts
  • FLOW collaboration styles: one of sixteen types, akin to personality-type frameworks
  • Work replay
  • Provenance map
  • Quantitative project activity data

Read more about Sylou's transparency approach

What else is in the box

Around the analysis, Sylou is a complete, modern writing environment: with AI assistance that is context-aware of the work, and tools for fiction and non-fiction alike.

The toolbox

  • Context-aware AI assistance: Ask, Propose, Expand, Simplify, Rephrase, Translate, Fix grammar
  • Per-paragraph provenance tracking
  • Project-aware AI chat: threads, document upload, web search
  • Creative-writing tools: world-building, character diagram, timeline; plus post-its and bookmarks
  • Tutor mode for educational contexts
  • Selectable LLMs: currently Claude, Mistral, GLM, DeepSeek

Self-hostable open-source

Sylou is fully open-source. You deploy it on your own cloud, use your own API keys, and keep your data under your control.

Your cloud, your data

  • Sylou does not collect any data; only services you choose to use (your Supabase, your LLM providers) handle your content
  • Runs on your Supabase project plus any static host; first-time setup detailed hereunder
  • If you wish, you can also review the code, and even contribute to the project!

Read the setup guide

Help shape Sylou

We'd love to get feedback from you. If you have a few minutes, take a look at the questionnaire below. It won't take much of your time (11 questions, 5 minutes max) and that way you can easily contribute to the direction Sylou will take, and share feedback on possible future functionalities.

You can also directly reach out to us at: contact@sylou.eu

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