this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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Harper: Free, Open Source Grammar Checker (writewithharper.com)
submitted 6 days ago by cm0002@suppo.fi to c/opensource@programming.dev
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What is it?

Harper is a free English grammar checker designed to be just right. You can think of it as an open-source alternative to Grammarly. I created it after years of dealing with the shortcomings of the competition.

Private

Harper is completely private, in every sense of the word.

Since Harper runs on-device, your data doesn't go anywhere you don't want it to.

That means you have 100% certainty we don't violate your copyright by training large language models.

Harper also intentionally avoids including any kind of generative AI in any part of our processing pipeline.

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[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

as an open-source alternative to Grammarly

intentionally avoids including any kind of generative AI in any part of our processing pipeline

Isn't that what Grammarly is all about, though? Be better than traditional spellchecking through LLM?

I assume Harper is entirely Rules based, then? Which inherently means limited to what rules where introduced manually and what the rules cover.

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

You may like to read @thatonecoder@lemmy.ca's comment, which basically says that they're working on patching these holes.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That comment doesn't say anything about what I'm asking about here.

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Fine, then: LLMs hallucinate and make mistakes. You can't beat rules in grammar; get detailed enough and everything will work. My point is that they are actively working on refining rules, which is the best any of us could ask for.