Use AI Cleanup

AI Cleanup turns rough sermon notes, extracted document text, or an uneven draft into a cleaner manuscript while protecting the preacher's meaning and voice.

It is designed for editing and formatting, not for writing a new sermon. Exlectio works from the current sermon revision, creates a separate cleaned draft, and gives you an opportunity to review it before making it current.

What AI Cleanup does

AI Cleanup can:

• Correct obvious spelling, grammar, punctuation, and spacing problems.
• Turn recognized section labels into clear Markdown headings.
• Improve paragraph and bullet formatting according to your selected cleanup format.
• Complete fragmented notes when the intended sentence is clear.
• Preserve Scripture references, sermon points, idea sequence, tone, humor, and conversational language.
• Suggest useful tags for Scripture, themes, doctrine, application, audience, or occasion when those ideas are clearly present.
• Produce a readable draft for review, editing, searching, and later PDF export.

What AI Cleanup should not do

AI Cleanup is instructed not to:

• Invent sermon points, stories, illustrations, applications, statistics, or Scripture references.
• Add theological claims that were not in the source.
• change the doctrine, overall message, emphasis, or preacher's voice.
• Expand a short sermon into a longer one with new material.
• Summarize or remove sections merely to make the sermon shorter.
• Turn a personal preaching voice into generic, academic, corporate, or AI-sounding prose.
• Guess when the source wording is unclear.

AI Cleanup is a drafting aid. A person should always review the result before approving, publishing, or preaching from it.

An illustrated before-and-after example

The following simplified example shows the kind of cleanup Exlectio is intended to perform.

Before cleanup

Rough source notes

Intro—we all carry guilt sometimes. Romans 8, no condemnation.

Point 1: Grace changes how we stand before God. Not because we fixed everything! Because Jesus.

Application: Stop hiding. Bring failure to God. Show grace to other people this week.

After cleanup as a polished manuscript

Intro

We all carry guilt sometimes. Romans 8 reminds us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Point 1: Grace Changes How We Stand Before God

This is not because we have fixed everything. It is because of Jesus.

Application

Stop hiding and bring your failure to God. This week, look for an opportunity to show grace to another person.

The wording is cleaned and the structure is easier to read, but the sermon point and application remain the same.

Choose a cleanup format

Your cleanup format controls the shape of the cleaned draft. You can set the default from More → Profile Settings → AI Cleanup Preferences.

Polished manuscript

Choose Polished manuscript when you want a readable archival document with clear headings and natural paragraphs.

It:

• Uses paragraphs as the default.
• Preserves headings, sermon points, Scripture references, and section order.
• Keeps bullets only where the content is truly a list.
• Works well for public archives, reading, editing, and PDF export.

Illustrated result:

The Promise of Grace

Paul begins with a declaration: there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Grace changes our standing before God before it changes our circumstances.

Application

Because we have received grace, we can stop hiding and begin responding to others with patience and honesty.

Readable paragraphs

Choose Readable paragraphs when the source is mostly bullet points or fragmented preaching notes, but you want the result to read like a continuous teaching manuscript.

It:

• Converts clear bullet fragments into short paragraphs.
• Preserves headings and idea order.
• Avoids returning long lists unless a list is necessary.
• Works well when imported notes are accurate but visually choppy.

Illustrated result:

The Promise of Grace

Paul begins with a declaration that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Grace changes our standing before God. We do not receive it because we have fixed everything, but because of Jesus.

Preaching outline

Choose Preaching outline when you want to preserve a scannable structure that is easy to preach or teach from.

It:

• Preserves and clarifies bullet hierarchy.
• Uses nested Markdown bullets where appropriate.
• Keeps headings and section labels visible.
• Avoids flattening every thought into the same bullet level.

Illustrated result:

The Promise of Grace

• There is now no condemnation in Christ.
• Grace changes our standing before God.
• Grace is based on what Jesus has done.
• Our response to grace:
• Stop hiding.
• Bring failure honestly to God.
• Show grace to another person this week.

Choose a faithfulness level

Faithfulness controls how closely AI Cleanup stays to the source wording, sequence, and structure. It does not change the selected cleanup format.

The default faithfulness level is 4. Higher does not mean better, and lower does not mean less accurate. The setting describes how much editorial smoothing the source needs.

Format and faithfulness work together

These settings answer different questions:

• Cleanup format: What should the finished document look like?
• Faithfulness: How closely should the cleaned wording and sequence follow the source?

For example, Preaching outline + Faithfulness 5 keeps a close version of the original outline. Readable paragraphs + Faithfulness 2 has more room to turn fragments into natural sentences while preserving the sermon message.

Before running cleanup

1. Open the sermon and make sure its current manuscript contains usable text.
2. Correct obvious extraction failures, missing sections, or text from the wrong document.
3. Confirm the desired default format and faithfulness level under Profile Settings.
4. Remember that the selected preferences are captured when the cleanup job is created.

AI Cleanup cannot recover content that is missing from the current manuscript. Better source text produces a safer and more useful cleaned draft.

Run AI Cleanup

1. Open the sermon detail page.
2. Open AI Tools.
3. Choose Clean Up with AI.
4. Exlectio creates a background job and shows its status page.

The status page shows the cleanup format and faithfulness level captured for that job. If cleanup is already running, Exlectio returns you to the existing job instead of creating a duplicate.

What happens when cleanup finishes

After a successful cleanup:

1. Exlectio stores the cleaned result as a separate sermon revision.
2. The original and current manuscript remain preserved.
3. The sermon moves to Ready for Review.
4. The job page provides a Review Cleaned Sermon action.
5. Suggested tags are added when the sermon clearly supports them.

Review the entire result. You can edit the cleaned draft before saving it as the current revision. Saving the reviewed draft creates a new current working revision while keeping previous revisions available.

A practical review checklist

Before accepting the cleaned draft, check:

• Are the sermon points in the original order?
• Are Scripture references accurate and unchanged?
• Does the manuscript still sound like the preacher?
• Were illustrations, humor, transitions, and rhetorical questions preserved?
• Did the cleanup avoid adding new claims or applications?
• Are headings, paragraphs, and bullets easy to scan?
• Are generated tags relevant and specific?
• Is any unclear source wording still unclear rather than confidently guessed?

Edit anything that does not meet those expectations before making the revision current.

If cleanup fails

Open the AI Cleanup job status page from the sermon detail page. Common failure categories include:

• The current sermon revision is empty.
• AI Cleanup is not configured for the environment.
• The AI service could not be reached or timed out.
• The AI service returned an empty or malformed structured response.
• The result was too short to be safely accepted as the cleaned manuscript.
• Workspace access or subscription rules do not allow another cleanup job.

The status page displays the user-safe failure message and offers Try Cleanup Again when another attempt is available. An automatic retry preserves the original job settings. Choosing Try Cleanup Again after a final failure creates a new job using the cleanup preferences currently saved on your profile.

If a retry fails again:

1. Confirm that the current manuscript contains complete, readable source text.
2. Try a format and faithfulness combination better suited to the source.
3. Check whether other AI jobs are running.
4. Try again later if the AI service is temporarily unavailable.

A simple way to choose settings

Ask two questions:

1. How should this sermon be read or used afterward? Choose manuscript, readable paragraphs, or outline.
2. How much editorial smoothing does this source need? Choose a faithfulness level from 1 to 5.

When unsure, start with Polished manuscript and Faithfulness 4, then review the result before making it current.