Vale: Linter for Prose Vale, a command-line linter for prose developed solely by Joseph Kato, offers fast, cross-platform linting for spelling and style across multiple markup formats, with extensibility via YAML and an MIT license. The tool is available as an open-source binary that does not require a programming language setup, and it is sponsored by Mintlify and DigitalOcean, with hosting credits provided by DigitalOcean for Vale Studio. Vale is a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose. It's fast , cross-platform Windows, macOS, and Linux , and highly customizable . Tip Try Vale CMS : the hosted authoring layer for Vale. Build and maintain your style guide in the browser -- config, rules, vocabularies, dictionaries, filters, views, and templates -- with the real Vale engine linting live before you ship changes back to your repository. Hi there I'm @jdkato , the sole developer of Vale. If you'd like to help me dedicate more time todeveloping,documenting, andsupportingVale, feel free to donate through GitHub Sponsors or Open Collective . Any donation—big, small, one-time, or recurring—is greatly appreciated | Mintlify | An AI-native documentation platform built for developers. Ships Vale as a built-in CI check. Promptless Suggests doc updates when your product changes.Runs Vale on every doc its agents write.Sponsors at $1,000 and above get a dedicated page on vale.sh . Thanks to DigitalOcean for providing hosting credits for Vale Studio . Deploy now on DigitalOcean https://m.do.co/c/dc0864bb87fd and get $200 in free credits - Support for markup : Vale has a rich understanding of many markup formats https://docs.vale.sh/formats , allowing it to avoid syntax-related false positives and intelligently exclude code snippets from prose-related rules. - A highly customizable extension system https://docs.vale.sh/topics/styles : Vale is capable of enforcing your style —be it a standard editorial style guide https://vale.sh/explorer or a custom in-house set of rules see examples https://vale.sh/ adopters . - Easy-to-install , stand-alone binaries: Unlike other tools, Vale doesn't require you to install and configure a particular programming language and its related tooling such as Python/pip or Node.js/npm . See the documentation https://vale.sh for more information. NOTE: While all of the options listed below are open-source CLI-based linters for prose, their implementations and features vary significantly. And so, the "best" option will depends on your specific needs and preferences. | Tool | Extensible | Checks | Supports Markup | Built With | License | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Vale | Yes via YAML | spelling, style | Yes Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, HTML, XML, Org | Go | MIT | | textlint | Yes via JavaScript | spelling, style | Yes Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, HTML, Re:VIEW | JavaScript | MIT | | RedPen | Yes via Java | spelling, style | Yes Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, Textile, Re:VIEW, and LaTeX | Java | Apache-2.0 | | write-good | Yes via JavaScript | style | No | JavaScript | MIT | | proselint | No | style | No | Python | BSD 3-Clause | | Joblint | No | style | No | JavaScript | MIT | | alex | No | style | Yes Markdown | JavaScript | MIT | The exact definition of "Supports Markup" varies by tool but, in general, it means that the format is understood at a higher level than a regular plain-text file for example, features like excluding code blocks from spell check . Extensibility means that there's a built-in means of creating your own rules without modifying the original source code. All benchmarking was performed using the open-source hyperfine https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine tool on a MacBook Pro 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 : hyperfine --warmup 3 '