Scramble: Open-Source Alternative to Grammarly

https://github.com/zlwaterfield/scramble

by zlwaterfield • 2 years ago

416 165 2 years ago

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_• 2 years ago

This is awesome. Can’t wait to install it and put it through its paces.

compootr3• 2 years ago

how much does it cost in a normal day?

pkhamre• 2 years ago

What is a normal day?

Tepix6• 2 years ago

Don't think about money. Think about the cost in terms of forgone privacy.

TheRealPomax3• 2 years ago

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.

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Not right now. Looking into a mac app. This was just a quick and dirty first go at it.

kylebenzle• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

pbhjpbhj• 2 years ago

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?

socksy• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Rookie question: the openAPI endpoint costs extra right? Not something that comes with chatGPT or chatGPT+.

paraknight• 2 years ago

Yes

Szpadel• 2 years ago

yes, but gpt-4o-mini costs very little so you probably will spend well under $1/month

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Correct but I'm going to loom into a locally running LLM so it would be free.

xdennis2• 2 years ago

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.

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Agree, I want to add a local LLM set up. The wording there isn't great.

reynaldi• 2 years ago

Awesome, I was just about to look for something like this and it showed up on HN!

vunderba• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

I'm always a fan of 'bring your own key' (BYOK) approaches.

"Bring your own key" has the same amount of syllables as "BYOK"

closetkantian3• 2 years ago

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.

halJordan• 2 years ago

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.

ofou2• 2 years ago

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.

rafram2• 2 years ago

AFAIK Apple Intelligence will include essentially that.

ofou2• 2 years ago

let's hope the rumors are real

rafram2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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...

TheRealPomax3• 2 years ago

This pretends that LLMs aren't just "more machine leearning", which they simply are.

tiew9Vii• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

raverbashing2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Wonder if there's an option to somehow pipe the prompting to a local ollama instead.

raverbashing2• 2 years ago

That would be an interesting possibility

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Agree, wording could be improved. I'm gonna add local LLM support.

polemic• 2 years ago

Seems a stretch to call it open source.

WA• 2 years ago

Seems a stretch to call it "more privacy-friendly" if it talks to OpenAI.

senko• 2 years ago

The source seems to be at the linked repo, and the license is MIT. How’s that a stretch?

trog• 2 years ago

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.

dotancohen4• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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://github.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.

latexr3• 2 years ago

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.

xdennis2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Disagree. The fact that it can call another closed-source service doesn't mean that this tool itself is not open source.

Alex4386• 2 years ago

People really should stop calling a glorified openAI API as an open-source software.

jillesvangurp• 2 years ago

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.

dotancohen4• 2 years ago

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.

guappa3• 2 years ago

This stuff is starting to enter debian as well -_-'

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Plan is to add local LLM support so goal is fully OSS, agree initial wording could have been better.

conradklnspl2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

conradklnspl2• 2 years ago

They use the LGPL license for a lot of their work.

https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool/blob/master...

dns_snek• 2 years ago

Self hosted & open core seems distinctly better than an open wrapper around a black box core that's hosted by a 3rd party.

slg• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

isaacfrond3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Is there a way to add and use niche custom terminology?

shahzaibmushtaq2• 2 years ago

How come I have never heard of languagetool before or maybe I have never looked beyond Grammerly. Thank You!

Semaphor• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Same, it integrates in all input fields too and has all the browser extensions you need. Non-GitHub landing page: https://languagetool.org

ktosobcy• 2 years ago

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…

dspillett4• 2 years ago

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.

herrherrmann2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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...

dspillett4• 2 years ago

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.

dontdieych2• 2 years ago

I've downloaded 'ngrams-en-20150817'. Please drop link that can teach me how to apply ngrams file.

Thanks.

dspillett4• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

There is also an alternative more lightweight self-hosted server in Rust, compatible with the official clients: https://github.com/cpg314/ltapiserv-rs

remoquete• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

I also use LanguageTool

easy to install in LibreOffice

isaacfrond3• 2 years ago

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.

nucleartux3• 2 years ago

I made the same thing, but it works without ChatGPT key: https://github.com/nucleartux/ai-grammar/

creesch• 2 years ago

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?

nucleartux3• 2 years ago

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.

Tepix6• 2 years ago

Nice. Can you please add support for contacting your own private OpenAI compatible server (like ollama)?

nucleartux3• 2 years ago

Yes, it's on my roadmap!

bartread• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

upping this - I won't install chrome :)

shahzaibmushtaq2• 2 years ago

Grammarly was here before the AI boom, so Grammarly isn't just dependent on AI, but also heavily on HI.

nik736• 2 years ago

How is it more privacy respecting when it's sending stuff to OpenAI servers?

lccerina• 2 years ago

It uses OpenAI, so it's not open source. Keep this shit away from me.

Festro• 2 years ago

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.

ichik2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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/

ichik2• 2 years ago

Is the Electron version supposed to be available on Linux? I see only mentions of Windows on the website.

HL33tibCe7• 2 years ago

This is exactly as open source as a Chrome extension wrapping Grammarly’s API would be, i.e. not at all.

gaiagraphia• 2 years ago

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.

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Honestly just an oversight. I want to remove that dependancy anyways with an open source model.

janandonly• 2 years ago

I am currently paying for LaguageTool but I will definitely give this open source software a try !

miguelaeh3• 2 years ago

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.

zlwaterfield8• 2 years ago

Agree - I want to improve the UX, this was just a quick attempt at it. Thanks for the feedback!

miguelaeh3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

closetkantian3• 2 years ago

To be fair, OpenAI used pirated data

highcountess• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

much ado about nothing, the code is there, edit it and use a local AI.

contagiousflow• 2 years ago

But the code as give is said to respect privacy.

sharemywin• 2 years ago

settings for opting out of training etc. for OpenAI

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-fa...

lawlessone• 2 years ago

Be surprised if thats honored

charlie0• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Privacy.md needs to be updated.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at [your contact information].

chilipepperhott• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Absolutely! Being dyslexic, Grammarly is much more than the AI tool that was recently added, which is great, too.

the_arun• 2 years ago

Do we need OpenAI for this? Can’t we have an LLM sitting locally work?

grayxu• 2 years ago

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.

mproud• 2 years ago

F*ck Grammarly.

kirso• 2 years ago

Is there something like that for VSCode?

ully• 2 years ago

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."

Can anyone help

Scramble: Open-Source Alternative to Grammarly

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