They proclaim "privacy-respecting" but all your keystrokes go to OpenAI. Horrific and genuinely upsetting.<p>Edit: The author replied to another comment that there is an intent to add local AI. If that is the plan, then fix the wording until it can actually be considered privacy-respecting: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41579144">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41579144</a>
I have been using LanguageTool[1] for years as "an open source alternative to [old school] Grammarly". It doesn't do that fancy "make this text more professional" AI stuff like this or Grammarly can now do, but they offer a self-hosted version so you don't need to send everything you write to OpenAI. If all you want is a better spelling/grammar checker, I highly recommend it.<p>[1] - <a href="https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool">https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool</a>
After years with Grammarly, I wanted a simpler, cheaper way to improve my writing. So I built Scramble, a Chrome extension that uses an LLM for writing enhancements.<p>Key features:
- Uses your OpenAI API key (100% local)
- Pre-defined prompts for various improvements
- Highlight text and wait for suggestions
- Currently fixed to GPT-4-turbo<p>Future plans: add LLM provider/model choice, custom prompts, bug fixes, and improve default prompts.<p>It's probably buggy, but I'll keep improving it. Feedback welcome.<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/zlwaterfield/scramble">https://github.com/zlwaterfield/scramble</a>
In the same space, I recommend checking out the Vale linter. Fairly powerful and open source, too. And doesn't rely on a backend.<p><a href="https://vale.sh" rel="nofollow">https://vale.sh</a>
Grammarly is a lifesaver for my day-to-day writing. All it does is correct spelling and punctuation or give rephrase suggestions. But Grammarly does it so unreasonably well that nothing else compares.<p>Grammarly's core functionality is not even LLM-based; it's older than that. Recently, they've crammed in some LLM features that I don't care a snoot about compared to its core functionality.<p>This tool, like any other "Grammarly alternative," is just another GPT wrapper to rewrite my text in an overly verbose and soulless way. I was hoping for a halfway-decent spelling corrector.
I installed the extensio on vivaldi and added an openAI api key, which registered as "saved". But when I click on the extension it still says "API key not set. Please set it in the options."<p>Can anyone help
Nice job—I'm always a fan of 'bring your own key' (BYOK) approaches. I think there's a lot of potential in using LLMs as virtual copy editors.<p>I do a fair amount of writing and have actually put together several custom GPTs, each with varying degrees of freedom to rewrite the text.<p>The first one acts strictly as a professional editor—it's allowed to fix spelling errors, grammatical issues, word repetition, etc., but it has to preserve the original writing style.<p>I do a lot of dictation while I walk my husky, so when I get back home, I can run whisper, convert the audio to text, and throw it at the GPT. It cleans it up, structures it into paragraphs, etc. Between whisper/GPT, it saves me hours of busy work.<p>The other one is allowed to restructure the text, fix continuity errors, replace words to ensure a more professional tone, and improve the overall flow. This one is more reserved for public communique such as business related emails.
> open-source Chrome extension<p>> It's designed to be a more customizable and privacy-respecting alternative to Grammarly.<p>> This extension requires an OpenAI API key to function<p>I disagree with this description of the service<p>No, it's not an "Open Source alternative to grammarly", it's an OpenAI wrapper
While Scramble doesn't seem to respect your privacy, a project I've been working on does.<p>Meet Harper
<a href="https://github.com/elijah-potter/harper">https://github.com/elijah-potter/harper</a>
I made the same thing, but it works without ChatGPT key: <a href="https://github.com/nucleartux/ai-grammar/">https://github.com/nucleartux/ai-grammar/</a>
How does this compare to <a href="https://languagetool.org" rel="nofollow">https://languagetool.org</a>, which is also open source?<p>I'm not sure what kind of AI Languagetool uses but it works really well!
> It's designed to be a more customizable and privacy-respecting alternative to Grammarly.<p>Kind of a shame it says it’s specifically for Chrome then. Where’s the love for Firefox?
Seems like it just has some prebaked prompts right now. FF's AI integration does this much already with custom prompts and custom providers. Pls let me set my own base url. So many tools already support the openai api.<p>All of that to say, this is of course a great addition to the ecosystem.
For me the huge part of Grammarly's magic is that it's not just in the browser, but in any text input on desktop with their desktop app (with some exceptions). Having it only in only in one application just doesn't cut it, especially since it's not my browser of choice.
Are there any plans regarding desktop integration. Linux is woefully underserved in this space with all major offerings (Grammarly, Languagetool) having only macOS/Windows versions.
One strong point of Grammarly comes from its friendly display of diffs (which is somewhat similar to what Cursor does).
This project simply uses some predefined prompts to generate text and then replaces it. There are countless plugins that can achieve this, such as the OpenAI translator.<p>If this tool really wants to compete with Grammarly.
I am a Grammarly user and I just installed Scramble to try it out. However, it does not seem to work. When I click on any of the options, nothing happens. I use Ubuntu 22.04.<p>Also, to provide some feedback, it would be awesome to make it automatically appear on the text areas and highlight errors like Grammarly does, it creates a much better UX.
>Important: This extension requires an OpenAI API key to function. You need to provide your own API key in the extension settings. Please visit OpenAI to obtain an API key.<p>Obviously not important enough to put in the title, or a submission statement here, though. Curious.
That's awesome, Grammarly is good but not as good as large language models such as GPT-4. I have been waiting for a tool that incorporates LLMs into grammar checks for a long time and here it comes! Hope it can integrate Anthropic API in the near future.
Nowadays I just load the whole thing in to chatgpt and it checks the whole thing better than I ever could. You got to be clear what you want do in the prompt. Don't change my writing! only correct errors.
I am building something similar to Grammarly as a personal project but quickly realized how hard it is to get data in 2024. Contemplating whether I should just resort to pirated data which is just sad.
Loved it. I'd love to use something like "right-click, fix grammar" under iOS—not just rewrite. I want to keep my own voice, just with minimal conformant grammar as a second-language speaker.
An alternative from the developer of Coolify.
It’s no longer for sale, but the page mentions he’ll open-source it:<p><a href="https://safetyper.com/" rel="nofollow">https://safetyper.com/</a>
So it doesn't provide realtime feedback on your writing within a dialog box like Grammarly does? It's just a (non-open source) OpenAI set of pre-written prompts?<p>Come on.<p>Pitch this honestly. It'll save me clicks if I'm using an LLM to checker grammar already, but if I use Grammarly it's not an alternative at all. Not by a long way.