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write-good
MITwrite-good is an open-source prose linter that replaces paid writing assistants with free, offline command-line checks for passive voice and wordiness.
Open-source alternative to — compare it against:
Overview
write-good is a lightweight Node.js linter that checks Markdown and plain text for stylistic weaknesses like passive voice, weasel words, and cliches. Its main advantage is running deterministic regex heuristics entirely offline without sending prose to cloud services. Executed in local terminals or CI pipelines, it offers a zero-cost way to maintain clear documentation.
Why write-good instead of Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor targets individual writers through a $19.99 desktop purchase or paid subscriptions for AI writing tiers. Its interface provides an interactive visual canvas with color-coded highlighting for sentence complexity and readability scores. write-good tackles the same stylistic rules—flagging passive voice, adverbs, and wordy phrases—without seat fees or browser GUIs. Rather than pasting text into a browser, developers run write-good directly against repository file trees from shell prompts or build scripts.
For engineering teams, cost dynamics favor local automated tooling over per-seat subscriptions. Paying recurring licenses for Hemingway Editor or Grammarly quickly adds up across dozens of developers who only write documentation, pull request notes, or technical specs. write-good eliminates recurring software bills by running as an unmetered command-line tool or library on developer machines and CI runners. It lacks graphical grade meters, but it delivers a free, offline check that integrates into standard Git workflows.
What it does well
- Native CI execution: Scans documentation in build jobs using the
--parseflag, returning Unix exit codes to fail builds on unresolved style violations. - Shell globbing: Evaluates entire directories of Markdown files via shell globs in a single run without persistent background processes.
- Granular rule toggles: Lets developers disable individual checks via flags like
--no-passivewhile keeping strict rules for weasel words and cliches. - Extensible check modules: Loads custom style rules and third-party packages through Node.js exports to enforce project-specific terminology.
- Air-gapped local privacy: Processes text in-memory on local hosts, keeping internal API designs and sensitive configuration details off external servers.
- Programmatic Node.js API: Exports an in-memory function returning line indices and violation offsets for integration into static site generators and pre-commit hooks.
