The full audit of the three homepage concepts. All 18 changes were approved and applied on 18 August 2026; the cards below are the record of what shipped and why.
All 18 cards are applied and verified in the browser: D took 12 replacements, E took 15, F took 14. The weak layer was the client-verbatim copy inherited from the old WordPress site; it is now rewritten on all three concepts, and the before/after cards double as the client conversation about why.
Five principles, scored per concept. Every score below 4 traces to a change card.
The shared 2 on "name the pain first" is the one structural gap: all three pages open with who EBS is, and nowhere does a page say the thing that brings a contractor to a rep firm's site at 4pm on a Thursday. Card 05 fixes it once, per concept.
Showing 18 changes, most severe first — all applied 18 August 2026. Cross-site cards landed on all three concepts.
Environmental Building Systems, Inc. provides sales and service of heating, ventilation and air conditioning products to clients who install HVAC systems and maintain and own commercial and industrial type buildings. EBS sells replacement products and new products.
EBS sells and services commercial and industrial HVAC equipment for the contractors, engineers and facility owners who install, own and maintain those buildings across North and South Dakota. The same forty-line card covers replacement and new equipment.
Client-verbatim from the old site. "Provides sales and service of" is a verb wearing a noun costume, and "commercial and industrial type buildings" reads as filler. The rewrite keeps every fact, names the three audiences, and lands the line card. Both reviewers converged on this card independently.
We offer innovative and economical product services, maintaining state of the art products and selection software technology.
EBS runs the manufacturers' selection software in-house: send a duty point or a spec section and the answer comes back as a sized unit and a quote.
"Innovative," "economical" and "state of the art" are three unsupported claims in one sentence, and any firm in any industry could publish it. The one real asset buried in it is the selection software. The rewrite makes that the whole sentence and shows the reader how to use it.
EBS is project orientated.
EBS works from the drawing set.
Client-verbatim, and "orientated" reads as a typo to a US audience. E sets it as a section headline, which monumentalizes it. Replace with the concrete meaning; if you would rather keep their phrase, correct it to "project-oriented" and raise it with the client either way, since it also sits on their live site.
EBS meets client needs on projects of all sizes and types.
The line card is the same on a single replacement fan coil and on a full central plant.
"Meets client needs" cannot be false, so it says nothing. The replacement makes the same breadth claim with two ends of a real scale, and it borrows the strongest sentence already written for concept E.
(no line on any page names the reader's problem)
D/E: "A dead unit, a spec to meet, or a drawing set due Friday: either office quotes it." · F: "Whatever failed, whatever the spec calls for: send it."
All three pages open with identity. The reader arrives with a broken unit or a deadline. One added line under each hero names that, in each concept's register, without touching the heroes themselves.
A rep firm, not a catalog. … Not a logo wall — a line card.
A rep firm with forty lines. … (second sentence deleted)
The same "not X, Y" device twice on one page is a habit, and the textbook AI-writing tell. The headline survives in positive form; the second instance adds nothing to the sentence before it, which already says represents, quotes and supports.
Call 605-342-2407 · Email EBS
Call Rapid City 605-342-2407 · Call Lake Preston 605-271-9922
D and E both close with both offices; F closes with only the unlabeled Rapid City number. An East River contractor should not have to hunt for their office. Lake Preston's number exists on F only inside the script-rendered office cards.
Get a quote (nav) · Start a project (hero)
Start a project (both)
Two names for the same action makes the reader check whether they are different. One verb everywhere; "See the line card" stays as the visibly secondary option. Same fix on F, which drifts across Contact, Start a project and Email EBS.
What EBS actually does.
What EBS does.
"Actually" argues with an accusation nobody made — the same defensive contrast as "not a logo wall," one word smaller. The plain version is calmer and stronger.
Every line below is one EBS actually represents.
Every line below is on the EBS line card today.
Same "actually" tell as card 09. "Today" makes the claim about currency, which is the real point of showing the wall.
Send the scope and the schedule. EBS comes back with the equipment, the selection and a number.
Send the drawings, the scope and the schedule. EBS comes back with the equipment, the selection and a number.
D and F both ask for drawings; E forgot them, and E's own hero promise is built on the drawing set. "A number" stays — that is how contractors say it.
5 em dashes in ~450 words of body ("…new products — the same line card either way", "…fire and smoke dampers — Nailor, United Enertech…")
Keep 2. "The same line card covers replacement and new." · figcaptions switch to colons: "…fire and smoke dampers: Nailor, United Enertech, Metal Form."
Density over one per 150 words is the tell, not any single dash. The two kept are the ones doing real appositive work.
Air is engineered before it is felt.
Applied as: keep. The aphorism stays; the identity sub-line sits directly under it above the fold, and the new pain line (card 05) lands one beat later.
The aphorism is F's whole personality, but it is also an unfalsifiable line that could open an air-quality startup's site. The sub rescues it one beat later. Flagged honestly rather than flattened: Codex wanted it replaced with the same generic h1 on all three concepts, which defeats having concepts.
…the last three feet of every system, and the only part a building's occupants ever see.
…the last three feet of every system, and the part a building's occupants see.
"The last three feet" stays — it is the industry's own shorthand and exactly the kind of line the Agency Test wants. "The only part … ever" is one absolute more than the sentence needs.
Work
Projects
"Work" could be careers. On E, "Field" has the same ambiguity: "In the field" resolves it and matches the section it points to.
Four things hold true on a single replacement fan coil and on an entire central plant.
Applied: the four tab titles are now in the static HTML (the script rebuilds them identically on load), so the page's proof of its own claim survives without JS.
The four things do exist (verified: a four-tab component follows), so the sentence is honest. The defect is technical: the page's proof of its own claim is not in the HTML.
'Use and Occupancies' (D, curly single) · "Use and Occupancies" (F, curly double) · east river / west river (lowercase)
One quote style across whichever concept ships · East River / West River capitalized as the proper regional nouns they are
The code-language term stays; this audience reads "use and occupancy" as building-code vocabulary. Only the punctuation drifts.
Air distribution through water-source heat pumps. Send the drawing set and skip the browsing.
Air distribution through water-source heat pumps, alphabetically. Send the drawing set and skip the browsing.
One word tells the reader the 27-item list is navigable rather than decorative. Smallest card in the audit; kept because the list is the page's biggest block.
Counted against ai-slop-markers.md. Every tell maps to a card; four suspected tells were checked and cleared.
| Tell | Count | Where | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paired negation ("not X — Y") | 2 | F §01, F line card | 06 |
| Implied-contrast "actually" | 2 | D §01, E line card | 09, 10 |
| Unfalsifiable claims (client-verbatim) | 4 | All three, "Who we are" | 01, 02, 04 |
| Empty intensifiers (client-verbatim) | 3 | innovative / economical / state of the art | 02 |
| Em-dash density >1 per 150 words | 1 | F body | 12 |
| Announce-open ("Four things hold true…") | 1 | E method | 16 |
| Rule of three — checked, genuine enumerations | 0 | "Drawings, scope, schedule" is the actual list | — |
| Fabricated baselines / hedges / summary closes | 0 | — | — |
Codex GPT‑5.6 returned 46 cards; 8 groups were rejected on evidence. Recorded so the next audit does not re-litigate them.
| Codex proposed | Rejected because |
|---|---|
| Fix "Commercial andindustrial," "Manufacturerlines," "EnvironmentalBuilding Systems" as high-severity spacing defects | They are <br> line breaks in the markup; the rendered pages are correct. Artifact of the text extraction, verified against source. |
| Replace all three heroes with the same line: "Commercial and industrial HVAC equipment sales and service." | Convergence is the disease this audit exists to prevent. Three concepts exist to read differently. |
| Delete "Send us the building." | The best line in the set. The next line ("Drawings, scope, schedule.") resolves it instantly, so the comprehension cost is one beat and the memorability is real. |
| Replace East River / West River with city names | It is the standard South Dakota regional division; to this audience it signals local knowledge. Capitalization fixed instead (card 17). |
| "A number" → "a quote" | "Get me a number" is contractor idiom. Keeping the audience's own words is the Agency Test working as intended. |
| "Four things hold true" is a fabricated process | Verified false: a four-tab component follows. The real issue (tabs are JS-only) became card 16. |
| "The last three feet of every system" is an unsupported technical claim | Industry shorthand for air distribution. Only the "only part … ever" absolute was trimmed (card 14). |
| Rename writerly section heads ("Where the work lives.") | Eyebrow + lede already carry the information; the heads are the concepts' voice, sentence-cased and short. Taste, not defect. |
Codex independently found the client-verbatim block, the "orientated" headline on E, the paired negations on F, and the CTA drift — the same top findings as the primary pass, which is exactly the confirmation an adversarial reviewer is for. Its misses were all in one direction: flattening voice into safety. Gemini could not run: its CLI now requires migrating the account off the deprecated free tier.
Two category leaders scraped 18 August 2026. A third (svlinc.com) hid behind a cookie wall and is not cited.
| Move | Who does it | Effect | Adopted? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone number above everything, before the logo | hoffman-hoffman.com | The caller never scrolls | Proposed — add tel link to all three headers |
| Projects segmented by building type (data centers, K-12, hospitals) | hoffman-hoffman.com | Engineers self-select by application | Partly — D/E/F do this with imagery; labels could name building types |
| In-stock catalog as a first-class object | hoffman-hoffman.com | Turns "lead time" panic into a click | Not adoptable yet — needs a client fact: does EBS stock anything? |
| Heritage claim ("Engineered HVAC Solutions Since 1929") | mulcahyco.com | Longevity as trust, one line | Not adoptable yet — needs EBS founding year from the client |
| Category leaders still publish "innovative … solutions" copy | mulcahyco.com | The bar is low | Noted — after cards 01–04, all three concepts out-write both leaders |