Grammarly is an amazing tool for creating written content without a plethora of mistakes, be it spelling, grammar, and structure. It's one of many tools that can be relied on to bring enticing content from imagination to reality. I write a lot during the day, both on and off XDA. I've usually got Apostrophe, Obsidian, Visual Studio Code, and other browser tabs open that require text input and I'm always utilizing these helpers for publishing only the best content.

But after a solid few years of using Grammarly, I've decided to switch to a free, open-source alternative in the spirit of self-hosting.

What is Harper?

And how does it differ to Grammarly?

Harper is an English grammar checker created by a sole developer after years dealing with the drawbacks of already available options, such as Grammarly. Grammarly is brilliant at what it does, but you need pay for premium to make the most out it. That's no bueno for someone like me who's looking to pay for as few subscriptions as possible and self-host everything.

Another problem I have with these types of browser plugins and software is most of the hard work is carried out on servers. All your data is beamed up by Scotty onto some system owned and operated by someone else. I was never one to be fearful of this and trusted the likes of Microsoft and Apple with all of my data. That was until I started to see what they did with it all. I grew tired of seeing ads on my phone for things I actively spoke about with my wife, for instance.

The same goes for online tools like grammar helpers that make my life easier, but come at a cost, be it monetary or privacy (sometimes both!). Harper solves most of this through local execution, handling everything either within the browser or some other supported app. It's a trade-off since this does mean you don't get to enjoy the full suite of features and technologies offered by services such as Grammarly that can leverage the cloud, but it may be a cost worth bearing.

Getting started is easy

No account, no credit card

Setting up Harper in Obsidian and Firefox, two apps I frequently rely on for creative writing, was painless. Although not as versatile as more established options, Harper does check for repetition, spelling mistakes, misused terminology, punctuation, and more. Written in Rust, everything is processed in an instant and I find it neat to see the browser extension highlight words as I type, effectively checking per letter. And no account is required, allowing me to get up and running in no time.

But Harper doesn't do everything yet. I do miss a few things that tools such as Grammarly offered, including tone detection to determine whether I'm being too formal or not friendly enough. Clarity enhancements were also pretty neat for those times when you're too focused on covering every related topic and can sometimes overlook specific points that could cause confusion or not allow the paragraph to flow. Then there's AI support, which Harper also lacks.

It's still early days for the project, since it has only been around for a year or so and although it's developed by Elijah Potter, who has since joined the Automattic team (the same folk behind WordPress), Harper has an upstart feel about it. For Obsidian, a plugin is available that can be activated in seconds. The same goes for Firefox, offering the full capabilities of Harper in a compact download. But really, that's all I need Harper to do.

Anything that requires notably more computing power can be handled by a locally hosted LLM. Ollama and Open WebUI are running on a Proxmox server and a veriety of LLMs can be called upon in seconds, be it to check work over for me or offer up some suggestions for those times when writer's block kicks in. Spelling errors are highlighted red and I found myself constructing far better sentences with fewer issues relating to word count that can often times make it more difficult to follow my thoughts.

It's not perfect (yet)

... like other self-hosted stuff

Software is always continuously developed and improved and the same goes for Harper. This is a free tool at the end of the day, which makes development entirely dependent on the availability of contributors. Immich and Jellyfin are two of my favorite self-hosted apps, yet even they have areas where they could improve to bring their feature sets up to par with competitors. Jellyfin and intro/outro skipping, for instance.

The same goes for Harper. I'm looking forward to seeing how this continues to be fleshed out with refinements and improvements. It's already mostly there though I have found Harper to miss some glaring issues, such as miss-capitalized letters and it doesn't work properly on every website and platform. It would also be awesome to see it have the option to leverage a locally-hosted LLM for advanced suggestions.

But then I ask myself, do I need all the additional fluff that came with additions made to previously-used tools? For now, Harper runs as a great assistant to catch me should I trip here and there.