Tested: 6 major AIs each wrote 5 episodes of a restaurant business-war short drama — Claude comes closest to the "heartburn style," while Doubao excels at punchy lines

After 6 major AIs each wrote 5 episodes of a restaurant business-war short drama, the 30 scripts were highly homogenized: noodle shops, conscientious rules, low-price villains, and customers returning became fixed templates. Claude came closest to the "heartburn style," Doubao excelled at producing punchy lines, and "heartburn" appeared zero times.

**Key points**

**1. Highly uniform narrative template**

All 30 scripts advance through strong conflict, the villain cutting prices, the protagonist sticking to the rules, and customers returning; "conscience" appears in every script, "rules" in about 80%, noodle shops appear 6 times, and all six models chose a noodle shop for their first version.

**2. Claude most resembles the "heartburn style"**

Its dialogue is short and punchy, with rhythm and folk sayings; every version has an apprentice urging a price cut, the functional roles are complete, and it is closest to the plot formula of existing heartburn short dramas.

**3. Doubao is a punchline generator but weak on setup**

Doubao can produce viral lines such as "Earning a little less is fine, but the bottom line can't move," but 3 versions never explain what the shop sells, using only "a pot of soup" to carry the food setting.

**4. Other models diverge in style**

Qwen likes to add gangland violence, Kimi writes ancestral recipes and generational inheritance, GPT has rich categories and subplots, and DeepSeek's dialogue is plain, dry, and information-heavy.

**5. "Heartburn" is avoided by the models**

In all 30 scripts, "heartburn" does not appear even once. Xiaoyu speculates that after it became a meme, it was avoided in prompts; industry practitioners say script costs are extremely low and GPT is mostly used, with Doubao for low requirements, and some judge that "heartburn" was written by Doubao. 2026-10-25 11:13 6 major AIs, 30 scripts tested: Is Claude the real mother of the "heartburn style"? Entertainment Capital at a glance

Whatever the Odyssey era or the post-wave era, everyone has entered the big red fruit era of being flooded with "heartburn short dramas."

So-called "heartburn short dramas" are a type of plain business-war script that has recently become popular on short-video and short-drama platforms. A conscientious boss opens a shop, and the unscrupulous merchant next door suddenly steals business with low prices. The boss is pushed to the brink of collapse but still clings to his rules. When the unscrupulous merchant's inferior ingredients are exposed, customers finally realize that paying a little more is actually better, and the protagonist welcomes his own victory.

Highly homogenized lines like "heartburn" have become the spiritual totem of this genre.

"The rules can't be broken." "Eat it and you won't get heartburn." "What about the leftovers? Throw them out. People can't be without conscience."

Soon the "heartburn style" and "rules style" became popular beyond short dramas. Netizens use them to do homework, make reports, and deal with bosses; even "write what you know, don't touch what you don't" has become a kind of life philosophy.

How exactly are these scripts written? Entertainment Capital asked several practitioners currently making AI short dramas, and the answers varied. Some told us that "the cost of writing scripts is basically negligible; most of the time GPT is still used." Other practitioners mentioned that if the script requirements are low, they also use Doubao to generate, and according to their judgment, "heartburn" was still written with Doubao.

So, while the "heartburn" meme is still warm and a new round of short-drama memes that could succeed it has not fully emerged, Entertainment Capital decided to run an experiment: have six major models each write 5 episodes of a restaurant business-war short drama, and see which one writes the most "heartburn-flavored" script and where each reveals its own style.

Combining commonly used text models and knowledge of how short-drama industry practitioners use them, we selected six contestants: Doubao, Kimi, DeepSeek, GPT, Qwen, and Claude. Each model wrote 5 versions, each episode two minutes, for a total of 30 scripts.

Only after testing did we discover that the textual world of AI dramas indeed has its own rules and ghost stories. Those scripts that look low in value were actually cobbled together one by one by everyone risking Claude account bans.

Rules and ghost stories of the "heartburn era"

To let the AI fully use its corpus, Xiaoyu provided only a fairly broad prompt: write one two-minute vertical-screen AI live-action drama episode, with the theme of opening a restaurant business war; the opening must have strong conflict; each storyboard should clearly describe the scene, character actions, dialogue, and expressions; dialogue should be colloquial; end with a hook; and also describe the protagonist's appearance.

The story outline was also simple: a conscientious restaurant owner who insists on using real ingredients has his business stolen by a maliciously competing unscrupulous owner using low prices. The conscientious owner would rather earn less but insists on keeping the rules, and finally defeats the unscrupulous owner.

Then Xiaoyu found that he seemed to have entered a rather heartburn-inducing rules ghost story.

In this world, all the bosses who open shops and do business are Chinese food chefs, and the first choice is always a noodle shop.

Hewei Jun tallied the food categories in the 30 scripts, and noodle shops firmly topped the list with 6 appearances. Moreover, the first versions submitted by all six models chose noodle shops. Bun shops and braised food shops each appeared 3 times, followed by fried rice stalls and hot pot restaurants. The remaining pancakes, barbecue, seafood stalls, boxed meals, and handmade dumpling shops contributed a bit of limited diversity to this world.

Doubao and Kimi each also had two script versions that did not even bother to explain what exactly was being sold; all that remained in the story was a pot of soup.

Next are more specific rules. After sorting through the 30 scripts, Xiaoyu thinks that even without the word "heartburn," the "heartburn style" has a very clear set of language rules.

For example, the protagonist's speech must be short, preferably stating his attitude resoundingly in one sentence.

"I won't cut prices, and I won't smash my signboard even more."

"I don't dare gamble on food safety. Earning a little less is fine, but the bottom line can't move."

These lines emphasize being crisp. It is precisely because they are crisp enough, and full of rhythm and attitude, that they can perhaps be remembered by the audience and spread as memes.

In addition, "conscience" and "rules" must appear frequently in the protagonist's lines.

In the 30 scripts tested by Xiaoyu, every script contained the word "conscience," and its opposite, "black-hearted," also appeared frequently. "Rules" appeared in 80% of the scripts; no matter how the supporting characters tried to persuade him, the protagonist would always respond with "rules."

Good soup must be simmered slowly, the old braising liquid must be passed down from the previous generation after 30 years of simmering, and the meat must be purchased the same day. In the villain's plot, a large number of food-safety terms from livelihood news became the richest corpus, while price cuts meant frozen meat, synthetic meat, expired ingredients, pre-made seasoning packets, and other technological horrors.

In the "heartburn" rule-based horror, different characters must take sides.

The protagonist is responsible for setting and following the rules, the villain is responsible for maliciously cutting prices to compete with garbage ingredients, the apprentice is responsible for persuading the boss to be flexible, the regular customers are responsible for creating pressure and commenting on whether it is "heartburning," and the third party is responsible for verifying the truth.

What kind of "non-heartburning" work did Claude and Doubao write?

The shop is chosen, the rules are set, and next comes the familiar assembly line of wish-fulfillment drama. In the 30 scripts tested, all narrative directions were highly consistent: a classic strong-conflict opening, the villain shows up to challenge them, and the price war begins. After that, a large amount of plot is devoted to the protagonist starting to lose customers. Regular customers leave one after another, and the apprentice, trainee, or shop assistant at his side is frantic, urging the boss to cut prices quickly.

This is also the dense zone of punchlines for the whole drama. The protagonist usually stands by the stove, refuses without changing expression, and delivers that forceful line: "The rules cannot be broken."

In the latter half of the plot, it enters the satisfying stage of slapping the villain in the face. The black-hearted boss's low-price ingredients are finally caught red-handed. The third party in the script also appears in due course to uphold justice. The onlookers then complete their shift in stance. The people who were just complaining that the protagonist's prices were too expensive turn around and start cursing the villain, praising the righteous side: "It's a bit expensive, but eating it doesn't burn your heart."

The small climax is officially delivered here, and the breath the audience has been holding is finally let out.

Even though there was a large amount of similar content, Xiaoyu still measured the concentration of "heartburn flavor" from the lines and the different script styles output by each model.

If you look at the lines and plot direction, Claude is the one among the six contestants with the strongest "heartburn flavor."

First is the rhythm of lines popping out two characters at a time with a comma. In Claude's script there is a passage like this:

"A three-day bet! If your revenue exceeds half of mine, I close the shop; otherwise, you get out of this street."

"Bet! I, Zhou Dashan, every spit is a nail."

"Make one more steamer basket, and sleep one hour less. Once your hands get sloppy, the taste changes. I'd rather earn less than fool people."

The character does not sound like he is delivering lines; he sounds like he is rapping. This language rhythm and the inexplicably appearing folk sayings make Xiaoyu feel like she has seen them in 800 heartburn short dramas.

Especially worth mentioning is that among all the AI models, only Claude had functional roles like "apprentice," "trainee," and "helper" appear in every version of the script. The apprentice or trainee would take on the task of persuading the boss to cut prices. Watching the customers dwindle, he anxiously tries to find a way to save the business, while the boss repeatedly refuses to change his rules.

This setup is closest to the complete plot of the "heartburn short dramas" currently on platforms. The role's function is to highlight the protagonist's conscience and bottom line, and to speak the protagonist's rule-related punchlines.

(Existing short dramas vs. Claude's script)

Judging from the finished feel, Claude gives the impression that it already knows how this kind of script should be written. Given the story of a conscientious boss, it will push forward along the usual rhythm of the genre, and the coordination among lines, character relationships, and plot progression is relatively complete.

Second place, Doubao, is more like a punchline generator for "heartburn scripts." If I have Claude write a complete heartburn script but it lacks a few punchlines, I will have Doubao provide memorable "heartburn-flavored" lines.

Its lines are short, the rhythm is fast, and the attitude is clear. Almost every few lines you can find an expression suitable for being screenshotted and spread on its own.

For example: "Earning a little thinner is fine, but the bottom line cannot move." "In business, no merchant is not crafty! Your costs are high and you sell expensive, so customers naturally come to me." "People who come to eat snacks are after a bite of reassurance. Fool them once, and they won't come back."

Obviously, the character's attitude, the focus of the conflict, and the values this passage wants to convey are all completed in a single sentence.

With Doubao, the boss is a debater always ready to respond to doubts. When others question the price, it answers with the bottom line; when others question the ingredients, it answers with conscience; when others question the business method, it answers with rules.

But looking at the complete scripts, during testing Doubao had three versions that did not clearly explain what the shop actually sold, directly using "a pot of soup" to carry the main food setting.

There was only the output of punchlines and attitude, without specific ingredients and production processes, such as fresh meat, frozen meat, old braising liquid, and soup base details.

Every model has a story it likes

Besides Claude and Doubao, Kimi, GPT, Qwen, and DeepSeek also all wrote the basic plot of low prices stealing customers, the protagonist sticking to the bottom line, the villain being exposed, and customers returning.

But their lines were slightly less homogenized, and in specific scene settings each had its own style.

Qwen is the one that most loves to add ingredients to the script. Low-price competition is just an appetizer; as it writes, underworld conspiracies and violent conflicts appear, and the food-service business war races all the way toward street-level martial arts fiction.

Several openings given by Qwen are already full of gunpowder:

Opening 1: "Bang!" A pot of scalding hot broth is kicked over, and the white soup splashes across the ground.

Opening 2: "Splash!" A bucket of stinking dead shrimp is dumped right at the entrance of Lin Zheng's seafood stall.

Opening 3: "Bang!" The shop door is kicked open. Several people wearing masks rush in and pull up a cordon.

Midway through the plot, the villain's lackey will even raise an iron rod. The protagonist casually grabs a large iron ladle, stands in front of the signboard, eyes like knives.

At this point, Xiaoyu can no longer quite tell whether this is a food-service business war or a street-corner version of Young and Dangerous. Is the boss next door here to steal business, or to fight for the title of martial arts leader?

Kimi, on the other hand, likes to write plots in the style of inspirational legend dramas, giving a pot of soup a family history and making a single dish carry thirty years of grudges. Customers returning is only the surface of the story; the real climax is the ancestral recipe and the restaurant's generational inheritance.

Version 1:

Fang Henian is sorting through old belongings and finds the half sheet of recipe paper left behind by Huo Tianshi when he was driven away thirty years ago; on the back is a line of faded fountain-pen writing.

Fang Henian (voice-over, reading it aloud): "'Master, the real formula, I hid it in—'"

His hand trembles, and the paper nearly falls (subtitle): Half a sheet of recipe paper hides a thirty-year secret. What exactly happened back then?

Version 2:

Eldest Sister: "This flavor... it's exactly the same as that 'Chen's Malatang' stall from the night market that opened twenty years ago!"

The crowd (whispering): "Chen's?! The one that uses real bones to make broth and never adds a single drop of flavor essence?!"

A Can scratches his head, a little embarrassed: "...That was my dad. He passed away last year. This pot is the only thing he left me."

GPT belongs to the academic school of AI scripts. The five versions respectively set up fried rice, baozi, braised food, a noodle shop, and barbecue, covering a fairly complete range of food-service categories. The character relationships are also relatively rich; besides the head-on confrontation between the protagonist and the unscrupulous boss, it also adds subplots such as a partnership falling apart, mother-son conflict, and master-disciple conflict.

DeepSeek is the plainest of all the text models. The dialogue serves the script completely, without many punchy lines or rhetoric; when the protagonist trades lines back and forth, only information is left.

The problem is that DS's dialogue is as clean as an answer to a prompt. The characters say all the information they are supposed to convey, but it just comes off as "dry." Dialogue like this can hardly become a punchy line that can spread across the internet and be turned into a meme.

During the test, the most surprising thing was that the word "heartburn" never appeared even once.

Xiaoyu asked the models to write a food-service business-war story about conscientious operation and sticking to the rules, and what came back was a large number of expressions built around "conscience," "bottom line," "rules," and "food safety."

AI image by Entertainment Capital

Xiaoyu guesses that this may be related to "heartburn" having already become a widely discussed and mocked label. When creators describe this kind of story, perhaps, just like avoiding the AI flavor of "not... but..." in writing, it has become an expression that needs to be specially marked "avoid using" in the prompt.

This word, repeatedly quoted by netizens and turned into a meme, has instead retreated behind the scenes in the scripts generated by the models.

Perhaps this will be the inevitable path of the short-drama assembly line in the future: a round of short-drama formulas appears, and the models quickly learn it. But once it becomes homogenized dialogue, or even gets mocked as a meme, it will again be forcibly pushed off the historical stage of actual AI script use.

This article comes from the WeChat public account: Entertainment Capital, author: Lila Channel: Games and Entertainment

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