[HN Gopher] Scramble: Open-Source Alternative to Grammarly
___________________________________________________________________
Scramble: Open-Source Alternative to Grammarly
Author : zlwaterfield
Score : 388 points
Date : 2024-09-18 02:59 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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
|
| Future plans: add LLM provider/model choice, custom prompts, bug
| fixes, and improve default prompts.
|
| It's probably buggy, but I'll keep improving it. Feedback
| welcome.
|
| GitHub: https://github.com/zlwaterfield/scramble
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| This is awesome. Can't wait to install it and put it through
| its paces.
| compootr wrote:
| how much does it cost in a normal day?
| pkhamre wrote:
| What is a normal day?
| exe34 wrote:
| a day when nothing too unusual happens.
| compootr wrote:
| like what he's spending on average.
|
| Maybe sending some emails, writing or proofreading some
| docs -- what you'd do in a business day
| Tepix wrote:
| Don't think about money. Think about the cost in terms of
| forgone privacy.
| compootr wrote:
| to protect your privacy from grammarly you fork over your
| data to openai?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Does it work in "not a browser" though? Because that's the last
| place I need this, I _really_ want this in Typora, VS Code,
| etc. instead.
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Not right now. Looking into a mac app. This was just a quick
| and dirty first go at it.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Makes sense. Strongly hope it won't be a "mac app" but a
| cross-platform application instead though, nothing worse
| than having a great mac app that you can't use 50% of the
| time because your work computer's a mac and your personal
| computer's a windows machine because you like playing
| games.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Without marketing speak can I ask why anyone would have a need
| for a service like grammerly, I always thought it was odd
| trying to sell a subscription based spell checker (AI is just a
| REALLY good spell checker).
| gazereth wrote:
| Non-native speakers find it useful since it doesn't just fix
| spelling but also fixes correctness, directness, tone and
| tense. It gives you an indication of how your writing comes
| across, e.g. friendly, aggressive, assertive, polite.
|
| English can be a very nuanced language - easy to learn,
| difficult to master. Grammarly helps with that.
| rlayton2 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Grammarly and have been using it, and paying
| for it, for years.
|
| The advantage is not spell checking. It is grammar and style
| improvements. It tells you things like "this language is
| informal", or "this is a better word for that".
| mhuffman wrote:
| The "grammar" part, at least in a professional setting. You
| might be shocked at how many people will write an email
| pretty much like they would talk to friends at a club or send
| a text message (complete with emojis!) or just generally
| butcher professional correspondence.
| dotancohen wrote:
| So it may be more attractive to employers to check their
| employees' output, rather than an individual checking his
| own?
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| No, it's also useful to check your own writing. I've used
| it as both an Editor and a Writer.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Without marketing speak, can I ask why anyone would have a
| need for a service like Grammarly? ---
|
| Manual corrections here, but maybe they give a clue?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They aren't a native English speaker and would like a hand
| with phrasing.
| socksy wrote:
| It is widely used in countries where the professional
| language is English, but the native language of the speakers
| is not.
|
| For example, most Slavic languages don't have the same
| definite/indefinite article system English does, which means
| that whilst someone could speak and write excellent English,
| the correct usage of "a" and "the" is a constant conscious
| struggle, where having a tool to check and correct your
| working is really useful. In Greek, word order is not so
| important. And so on.
|
| Spell check usually just doesn't cut it, and when it does
| (say, in Word), it usually isn't universally available.
|
| Personally, I have long wanted such a system for German,
| which I am not native in. Lucky for me DeepL launched a
| similar product with German support.
|
| A recent example for me was that I was universally using
| "bekommen" as a literal translation of "receive" in all
| sentences where I needed that word. Through DeepL I learned
| that the more appropriate word in a bunch of contexts is
| "erhalten", which is the sort of thing that I would never
| have got from a spell check.
|
| Grammarly is notably a Ukrainian founded company.
| lhousa wrote:
| Rookie question: the openAPI endpoint costs extra right? Not
| something that comes with chatGPT or chatGPT+.
| paraknight wrote:
| Yes
| Szpadel wrote:
| yes, but gpt-4o-mini costs very little so you probably will
| spend well under $1/month
| miguelaeh wrote:
| I don't think the point here should be the cost, but the
| fact that you are sending everything you write to OpenAI to
| train their models on your information. The option of a
| local model allows you to preserve the privacy of what you
| write. I like that.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Openai does not train models on data that comes in from
| the API.
|
| https://openai.com/policies/business-terms/
| punchmesan wrote:
| Assuming for the moment that they aren't saying that with
| their fingers crossed behind their back, that doesn't
| change the fact that they store the inputs they receive
| and swear they'll protect it (Paraphrasing from the
| Content section of the above link). Even if it's not fed
| back into the LLM, the fact that they store the inputs
| anywhere for a period of time is a huge privacy risk --
| after all a breach is a matter of "when", not "if".
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Correct but I'm going to loom into a locally running LLM so
| it would be free.
| Tepix wrote:
| Please do (assuming you mean "look"). When you add support
| for a custom API URL, please make sure it supports HTTP
| Basic authentication.
|
| That's super useful for people who run say ollama with an
| nginx reverse proxy in front of it (that adds
| authentication).
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Look into allowing it to connect to either a LM Studio
| endpoint or ollama please.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Key features: - Uses your OpenAI API key (100% local)
|
| Sorry, but we have a fundamental disagreement on terms here.
| Sending requests to OpenAI is not 100% local.
|
| The OpenAI API is not free or open source. By your definition,
| if you used the Grammarly API for this extension it would be a
| 100% local, open source alternative to Grammarly too.
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Agree, I want to add a local LLM set up. The wording there
| isn't great.
| reynaldi wrote:
| Awesome, I was just about to look for something like this and it
| showed up on HN!
| vunderba wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| thankyoufriend wrote:
| Very cool! I'd be interested in reading more about your
| dictation-to-text process if you documented it somewhere,
| thanks.
|
| My partner and I were just talking about how useful that would
| be, especially driving in the car when all of the "we
| should..." thoughts come out of hiding. Capturing those action
| items more organically without destroying the flow of the
| conversation would be heavenly.
| copperx wrote:
| I do something similar. I have a custom Gemini Gem that
| critiques my writing and points out how I can better my
| paragraphs, but I do the bulk of the rewriting myself.
|
| I'm not a native speaker, and the nice thing about this
| approach is that I seem to be learning to write better instead
| of just delegating the task to the machine.
| edweis wrote:
| > I'm always a fan of 'bring your own key' (BYOK) approaches.
|
| "Bring your own key" has the same amount of syllables as "BYOK"
| closetkantian wrote:
| If your point is that BYOK is a useless acronym since it has
| the same number* of syllables, I disagree. Acronyms aren't
| just for reducing syllable count; they also reduce visual
| clutter and are easier to read for people who scan text.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| My brother from another mother, I thought I was the only
| one left who distinguishes much from many. (I wish I didn't
| know that it's technically an initialism not an acronym...)
| halJordan wrote:
| 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.
|
| All of that to say, this is of course a great addition to the
| ecosystem.
| ofou wrote:
| 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.
| rafram wrote:
| AFAIK Apple Intelligence will include essentially that.
| ofou wrote:
| let's hope the rumors are real
| rafram wrote:
| Grammarly grammar checking predates modern LLMs by many years, so
| I assume they're actually using some kind of rule-based engine
| internally.
| keiran_cull wrote:
| From what I understand, they've used a whole bunch of different
| kinds of AI models over the years.
|
| They've been reasonably transparent about how things work, e.g.
| this blog post from 2018:
| https://www.grammarly.com/blog/transforming-writing-style-wi...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| This pretends that LLMs aren't just "more machine leearning",
| which they simply are.
| tiew9Vii wrote:
| I was a big fan of Grammarly, as dyslexic, so often write the
| wrong word then ten minutes later when re-reading spot i used
| the wrong word/spelling etc.
|
| It worked extremely well, as you say I think by using basic
| rules engines.
|
| I've canceled my subscription recently as found it getting
| worse, not better, I suspect because they are now applying
| LLMs.
|
| The suggestions started to make less sense and the problem with
| LLM suggestions is all your writing takes the tone of the LLM,
| you loose your personality/style in what you write.
|
| The basic rules approach worked much better for me.
| mobscenez wrote:
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > open-source Chrome extension
|
| > It's designed to be a more customizable and privacy-respecting
| alternative to Grammarly.
|
| > This extension requires an OpenAI API key to function
|
| I disagree with this description of the service
|
| No, it's not an "Open Source alternative to grammarly", it's an
| OpenAI wrapper
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Wonder if there's an option to somehow pipe the prompting to a
| local ollama instead.
| raverbashing wrote:
| That would be an interesting possibility
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Agree, wording could be improved. I'm gonna add local LLM
| support.
| polemic wrote:
| Seems a stretch to call it open source.
| WA wrote:
| Seems a stretch to call it "more privacy-friendly" if it talks
| to OpenAI.
| senko wrote:
| The source seems to be at the linked repo, and the license is
| MIT. How's that a stretch?
| trog wrote:
| > The source seems to be at the linked repo, and the license
| is MIT. How's that a stretch?
|
| Speaking for myself, I clicked on this thinking it might be
| open source in the sense of something I can run fully
| locally, like with a small grammar-only model.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Check out languagetool, as mentioned in other comments. It
| isbtruly open source
| dotancohen wrote:
| The MIT licensed code is a wrapper for the OpenAI API. That
| OpenAI API provides the core functionality, and it is not
| open source.
| TheDong wrote:
| Code is only copyrightable if it has any element of
| creativity.
|
| This repo is _only_ really 7 sentences, like "Please correct
| spelling mistakes in the following text: " (these https://git
| hub.com/zlwaterfield/scramble/blob/2c1d9ebbd6b935...)
|
| Everything else is uncreative, and possibly un-copyrightable,
| boilerplate to send those sentences to OpenAI.
|
| All of the creative software happens on OpenAI's servers
| using proprietary code.
| too_damn_fast wrote:
| Why would you even say 'please' in a prompt ?
| t-writescode wrote:
| There has been evidence that better responses are
| sometimes provided with politeness for some LLMs.
|
| And some people just try to be polite and it only costs a
| couple tokens.
| chaosist wrote:
| I use to say please/thank you to gpt4 in 2023 all the
| time but it was because I was completely
| anthropomorphizing the model in various ways.
|
| I suspect it would be just as easy to write a paper that
| saying please has absolutely no effect on the output. I
| feel like gpt4 is/was stochastically better on some days
| and at some hours than others. That might even be wrong
| though too. The idea that it is provable that "please"
| has a positive effect on the output is most likely a
| ridiculous idea.
| latexr wrote:
| Because it's a wrapper on a closed-source system.
|
| Imagine writing a shell script that cuts and converts video
| by calling ffmpeg, would you say it was "a video converter
| written in bash"? No, the important part would not be in
| bash, that's just the thin wrapper used to call the tool and
| could be in any language. Meaning it would be useless to
| anyone who e.g. worked on a constrained system where they are
| not allowed to install any binaries.
|
| Same thing here. If you only run open-source software for
| privacy reasons, sending all your program data to some closed
| server you don't control doesn't address your issue. There's
| no meaningful difference between making an open-source plugin
| that calls an OpenAI API and one that calls a Grammarly API.
| guappa wrote:
| I've seen posts of "js interpreter written in 1 line" that
| was just a script calling node...
| latexr wrote:
| Were those being serious? That sounds like it could've
| been a joke/commentary.
|
| Then again, there are people who genuinely believe they
| could trivially rewrite curl.
|
| https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/05/20/i-could-rewrite-
| curl/
| xdennis wrote:
| The entire codebase is one call to `api.openai.com`.
|
| If I sold you an electrical generator, but the way it worked
| was by plugging it in, would you say it's fair to say it's a
| generator?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Disagree. The fact that it can call another closed-source
| service doesn't mean that this tool itself is not open source.
| Alex4386 wrote:
| People really should stop calling a glorified openAI API as an
| open-source software.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are several free alternatives to OpenAI that use the same
| API; which would make it possible to substitute OpenAI for one
| of those models in this extension. At least on paper. There is
| an open issue on the github repository requesting something
| like that.
|
| So, it's not as clear cut. The general approach of using LLMs
| for this is not a bad one; LLMs are pretty good at this stuff.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Yes, but the API at the end is providing the core
| functionality. Simply swapping out one LLM model for another
| - let alone by a different company altogether - will
| completely change the effectiveness and usefulness of the
| application.
| JCharante wrote:
| everyone stands on the shoulders of giants.
| sham1 wrote:
| Things standing on the shoulders of proprietary giants
| shouldn't claim to be free software/open source.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Their interfacing software __is__ open source; and,
| they're asking for your OpenAI api key to operate. I
| would expect / desire open source code if I were to use
| that, so I could be sure my api key was only being used
| for my work, so it's only my work that I'm paying for and
| it's not been stolen in some way.
| noduerme wrote:
| My older brother who got me into coding learned to code
| in Assembly. He doesn't really consider most of my work
| writing in high level languages to be "coding". So maybe
| there's something here. But if I _had_ to get into the
| underlying structure, I _could_. I do wonder whether the
| same can be said for people who just kludge together a
| bunch of APIs that produce magical result sets.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > But if I had to get into the underlying structure, I
| could.
|
| How do you propose to get into the underlying structure
| of the OpenAPI API? Breach their network and steal their
| code and models? I don't understand what you're arguing.
| latexr wrote:
| > How do you propose to get into the underlying structure
| of the OpenAPI API?
|
| The fact that you can't is the point of the comment. You
| could get into the underlying structure of _other things_
| , like the C interpreter of a scripting language.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| But what about the microcode inside the CPU?
| zja wrote:
| That tends to not be open source, and people don't claim
| that it is.
| K0balt wrote:
| I think the relevant analogy here would be to run a local
| model. There are several tools to easily run local models
| for a local API. I run a 70b finetune with some tool use
| locally on our farm, and it is accessible to all users as
| a local openAI alternative. For most applications it is
| adequate and data stays on the campus area network.
| seadan83 wrote:
| I think the argument is that stitching things together at
| a high level is not really coding. A bit of a no true
| scotsmen perspective. The example is that anything more
| abstract than assembly is not even true coding, let alone
| creating a wrapper layer around an LLM
| Tepix wrote:
| Well, as we see with AI applications like "Leo AI" and
| "Continue", using a locally run LLM can be fantastic
| replacements for proprietary offerings.
| dartos wrote:
| FWIW I've found local models to be essentially useless
| for coding tasks.
| Tepix wrote:
| Really? Maybe your models are too small?
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| The premier open weight models don't even comparatively
| perform well on the public benchmarks compared to
| frontier models. And that's assuming at least some degree
| of benchmark contamination for the open weight models.
|
| While I don't think they're completely useless (though
| its close), calling them fantastic replacements feels
| like an egregious overstatement of their value.
|
| EDIT: Also wanted to note that I think this becomes as
| much an expectations-setting exercise as it is evaluation
| on raw programming performance. Some people are
| incredibly impressed by the ability to assist in building
| simple web apps, others not so much. Experience will vary
| across that continuum.
| websap wrote:
| Woah woah! Those are fighting words. /s
| dartos wrote:
| One would hope, that since the problem these models are
| trying to solve is language modeling, they would eventually
| converge around similar capabilities
| guappa wrote:
| This stuff is starting to enter debian as well -_-'
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Plan is to add local LLM support so goal is fully OSS, agree
| initial wording could have been better.
| conradklnspl wrote:
| How does this compare to https://languagetool.org, which is also
| open source?
|
| I'm not sure what kind of AI Languagetool uses but it works
| really well!
| patrakov wrote:
| LanguageTool is not open source; it is open core. There are
| proprietary "premium rules," and you won't get them in a self-
| hosted version.
| conradklnspl wrote:
| They use the LGPL license for a lot of their work.
|
| https://github.com/languagetool-
| org/languagetool/blob/master...
| dns_snek wrote:
| Self hosted & open core seems distinctly better than an open
| wrapper around a black box core that's hosted by a 3rd party.
| slg wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] - https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
| weinzierl wrote:
| It's great. I had a subscription for Grammarly for a couple of
| years and used both tools in parallel, but found myself mostly
| using languagetool increasingly. It is strictly better, I'd say
| even for English but certainly if you need other languages or
| deal with multilingual documents. So I canceled Grammarly and
| didn't miss it since.
|
| You also can self-host and we do that at my workplace, because
| we deal with sensitive documents.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| And you can write your own custom rules. It's great as a reward
| for spotting an error in your writing you get to write a tiny
| little bit of code to spot it automatically next time. I've
| collected hundreds.
| divan wrote:
| Is there a way to add and use niche custom terminology?
| herrherrmann wrote:
| You can add your own words to your account, if that's what
| you mean!
| isaacfrond wrote:
| I've turned off the spell checker. Spell checking is done
| just fine in Word so I don't need it there.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| How come I have never heard of languagetool before or maybe I
| have never looked beyond Grammerly. Thank You!
| Semaphor wrote:
| This explains why I was confused by this. I moved to LT many,
| many years ago, and didn't know about those new Grammarly
| features. So I really wasn't clear how rewriting a specific
| text had anything to do with Grammarly.
| dewey wrote:
| Same, it integrates in all input fields too and has all the
| browser extensions you need. Non-GitHub landing page:
| https://languagetool.org
| ktosobcy wrote:
| This! And what's more - it doesn't funnel all what I type to
| OpenAI so I'd say it's more FOSS than this extension...
| dspillett wrote:
| And if you are in a regulatory environment (or elsewhere
| where data exfiltration paranoia is part of your daily work
| life), you can install your own instance of the service (sans
| premium features) and not send your text anywhere outside
| infrastructure you control.
| herrherrmann wrote:
| Absolutely plus one on this. LanguageTool is great and I'm also
| very happy on the free tier. With the app installed on macOS it
| also checks mails in the Apple Mail app, for example.
| milansuk wrote:
| > It doesn't do that fancy "make this text more professional"
|
| I looked into the Scramble code[0] and it seems there are few
| pre-defined prompts(const DEFAULT_PROMPTS).
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/zlwaterfield/scramble/blob/main/backgroun...
| dspillett wrote:
| You can also run your own local instance for the in-browser
| checking, which is handy for me as I need to be careful about
| sending text off to another company in another country (due to
| both client security requirements and personal paranoia!).
|
| You don't get the AI based extras like paraphrasing, and the
| other bits listed in as premium only
| (https://languagetool.org/premium_new), but if you install the
| n-gram DB for your language
| (https://languagetool.org/download/ngram-data/) I found it at
| least as good as, for some examples better than, Grammarly's
| free offering last time I did a comparison.
| dontdieych wrote:
| I've downloaded 'ngrams-en-20150817'. Please drop link that
| can teach me how to apply ngrams file.
|
| Thanks.
| dspillett wrote:
| I dropped the wrong link in the original post. The
| instructions for use are at
| https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-
| dat...
| dspillett wrote:
| Replying to self as I'm too late to edit: I left the wrong
| link for ngram info, the download location instead of the
| instructions for use which are at
| https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-
| dat...
| lou1306 wrote:
| For VSCode users who want to try out LanguageTool, I cannot
| recommend the LTeX extension [1] highly enough. Setting up a
| self-hosted configuration is really easy and it integrates very
| neatly with the editor. It was originally built for LaTeX but
| also supports Markdown now.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/valentjn/vscode-ltex
| heinrichf wrote:
| There is also an alternative more lightweight self-hosted
| server in Rust, compatible with the official clients:
| https://github.com/cpg314/ltapiserv-rs
| remoquete wrote:
| In the same space, I recommend checking out the Vale linter.
| Fairly powerful and open source, too. And doesn't rely on a
| backend.
|
| https://vale.sh
| loughnane wrote:
| I love vale. I've been using it for years. I branched rules
| from someone trying to emulate the economist style guide and
| kept tweaking.
|
| I like this approach so much better than leaning on AI because
| it's more my "voice".
|
| https://github.com/loughnane/style
| 037 wrote:
| An alternative from the developer of Coolify. It's no longer for
| sale, but the page mentions he'll open-source it:
|
| https://safetyper.com/
| reify wrote:
| I also use LanguageTool
|
| easy to install in LibreOffice
| isaacfrond wrote:
| 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.
| nucleartux wrote:
| I made the same thing, but it works without ChatGPT key:
| https://github.com/nucleartux/ai-grammar/
| creesch wrote:
| That looks pretty neat, how well does the gemini nano model
| work for this? Is it just picking up spelling errors or also
| looking things like punctuation?
| nucleartux wrote:
| It actually works pretty well. It fixes all grammar mistakes
| and punctuation and changes words if they don't fit. The only
| downside is that, because it's a very small model, it
| sometimes produces completely nonsensical or incomplete
| responses. I haven't figured out how to fix this yet.
|
| You can have a look at the screenshots in the repository or
| on the store page.
| Tepix wrote:
| Nice. Can you please add support for contacting your own
| private OpenAI compatible server (like ollama)?
| nucleartux wrote:
| Yes, it's on my roadmap!
| bartread wrote:
| > It's designed to be a more customizable and privacy-respecting
| alternative to Grammarly.
|
| Kind of a shame it says it's specifically for Chrome then.
| Where's the love for Firefox?
| daef wrote:
| upping this - I won't install chrome :)
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Grammarly was here before the AI boom, so Grammarly isn't just
| dependent on AI, but also heavily on HI.
| nik736 wrote:
| How is it more privacy respecting when it's sending stuff to
| OpenAI servers?
| lccerina wrote:
| It uses OpenAI, so it's not open source. Keep this shit away from
| me.
| Festro wrote:
| 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?
|
| Come on.
|
| 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.
| ichik wrote:
| 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.
| bukacdan wrote:
| I have developed a system-wide writing assistant like you're
| describing. By design, it has no exceptions to where it works.
|
| Currently, it's only for Mac, but I'm working on an Electron
| version too (though it's quite challenging).
|
| Check out https://steerapp.ai/
| ichik wrote:
| Is the Electron version supposed to be available on Linux? I
| see only mentions of Windows on the website.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| This is exactly as open source as a Chrome extension wrapping
| Grammarly's API would be, i.e. not at all.
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| >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.
|
| Obviously not important enough to put in the title, or a
| submission statement here, though. Curious.
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Honestly just an oversight. I want to remove that dependancy
| anyways with an open source model.
| janandonly wrote:
| I am currently paying for LaguageTool but I will definitely give
| this open source software a try !
| miguelaeh wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| zlwaterfield wrote:
| Agree - I want to improve the UX, this was just a quick attempt
| at it. Thanks for the feedback!
| miguelaeh wrote:
| You're welcome! Let me know if you plan to integrate local
| models as mentioned in other comments, I am working on
| something to make it transparent.
| lvl155 wrote:
| 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.
| closetkantian wrote:
| To be fair, OpenAI used pirated data
| highcountess wrote:
| I'm just going to remind everyone that all these LLMs were also
| trained on not just pirated, but all out stolen data in
| organized and resourced assaults on proprietary
| information/data, not even to mention roughshod ignoring any
| and all licenses.
| Technetium wrote:
| They proclaim "privacy-respecting" but all your keystrokes go to
| OpenAI. Horrific and genuinely upsetting.
|
| 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:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41579144
| segmondy wrote:
| much ado about nothing, the code is there, edit it and use a
| local AI.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| But the code as give is said to respect privacy.
| sharemywin wrote:
| settings for opting out of training etc. for OpenAI
|
| https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-fa...
| lawlessone wrote:
| Be surprised if thats honored
| charlie0 wrote:
| Lol, this was my second thought immediately after my first,
| which was one of excitement. Hope the author does add a option
| for local. Wonder how that would work as a Chrome extension.
| Doesn't seem like a good idea for extensions to be accessing
| local resources though.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Doesn't seem like a good idea for extensions to be
| accessing local resources though.
|
| To the best of my knowledge all localhost connections are
| exempt from CORS and that's in fact how the 1Password
| extension communicates with the desktop app. I'd bet
| Bitwarden and KeePassXC behave similarly
| fph wrote:
| You can self-host Languagetool and use it as a Chrome/Firefox
| extension. The extension talks to a Languagetool server via
| HTTP, and takes its address as a configurable option. So you
| just run the local server, and pass localhost:8080 as the
| server address.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Download koboldcpp and llama3.1 gguf weights, use it with the
| llama3 completions adapter.
|
| Edit the 'background.js' file in the extension and replace the
| openAI endpoint with
|
| 'http://your.local.ip.addr:5001/v1/chat/completions'
|
| Set anything you want as an API key. Now you have a truly local
| version.
|
| * https://github.com/LostRuins/koboldcpp/releases
|
| * https://huggingface.co/bartowski/Meta-
| Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-...
|
| *
| https://github.com/LostRuins/koboldcpp/blob/concedo/kcpp_ada...
| ziddoap wrote:
| Privacy.md needs to be updated.
|
| > _If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please
| contact us at [your contact information]._
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| While Scramble doesn't seem to respect your privacy, a project
| I've been working on does.
|
| Meet Harper https://github.com/elijah-potter/harper
| singhrac wrote:
| I think Harper is very cool, and you should sell it better.
| It's a local-only low latency & static (no Python) LanguageTool
| alternative. It doesn't use a large language model.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| funshed wrote:
| Absolutely! Being dyslexic, Grammarly is much more than the AI
| tool that was recently added, which is great, too.
| the_arun wrote:
| Do we need OpenAI for this? Can't we have an LLM sitting locally
| work?
| grayxu wrote:
| 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.
|
| If this tool really wants to compete with Grammarly.
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