# Ethics and Intended Use

Patina removes generic AI-writing packaging while preserving the author's intended meaning. It is an editing aid, not a provenance oracle.

## Patina is for

- **Post-AI editing:** cleaning drafts that the author is permitted to create with AI assistance.
- **Audit trails:** showing which patterns were flagged and why a rewrite changed them.
- **Voice preservation:** making prose sound less templated without changing claims, numbers, polarity, or causation.
- **False-positive review:** helping maintainers and editors discuss suspicious passages without accusing a writer.
- **Contributor research:** improving pattern packs, fixtures, and benchmark methodology in public.

## Patina is not for

- **Academic honor-code evasion.** If a school, journal, or publisher requires disclosure, patina does not remove that obligation.
- **Publisher or workplace AI-disclosure circumvention.** A cleaner sentence is not evidence that AI was not used.
- **Plagiarism laundering.** Rewriting copied text does not make it yours.
- **Detector-bypass guarantees.** Scores are editing signals with false positives and false negatives, not guarantees against Turnitin, GPTZero, Originality, or any other detector.
- **Authorship accusation.** Do not use patina output or score reports as proof that a person used AI.

## What the score means

The AI-likeness score estimates how many known surface patterns appear in a text. It is useful for editing prioritization. It is not a moral judgment, authorship proof, or policy-compliance certificate.

## Disclosure stance

If a policy asks whether AI assisted the writing, answer that policy honestly. Patina can help make allowed AI-assisted drafts clearer and more faithful to the author's intent, but it cannot convert AI-assisted work into “originally human” work under policies that define originality by process.
