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Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

refine.sh

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Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#111

Post by slacktivism123 »

scottfr wrote: post #91
Deukhoofd wrote: post #8

Does anyone know how this compares to other products in its field, such as LanguageTool and Harper? LanguageTool can be hosted locally, and Harper runs entirely as an extension, so I'm interested in how the spelling and grammar checks compare.

We're building a Chrome extension grammar checker that runs locally using Chrome's built-in LLM. You can try it out here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/grammit-the-ai-gram... LLMs can also correct other sorts of mistakes, such as correcting "The first US President was _Ben Franklin_" to "George Washington".

>LLMs can also correct other sorts of mistakes, such as correcting "The first US President was _Ben Franklin_" to "George Washington".

And they can also cause new factual mistakes that a grammar checker never would!

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#112

Post by slacktivism123 »

diimdeep wrote: post #20

It does this This phrase is offensive and violates my safety guidelines. Therefore, I will not revise it. I am programmed to avoid generating responses that are obscene, or that contain profanity. because what's under the hood is this, and prompts are hardcoded unsloth/gemma-3n-E4B-it-GGUF You are a precision editor guided by a custom style manual. Your tasks are ordered by priority. Your primary rule is to consult t…

Incredible. Has any non-AI grammar checker ever returned a "safety" refusal to the user before? Is this the power of LLM wrappers?

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#113

Post by woadwarrior01 »

reconnecting wrote: post #99

There is no guarantee that this software will not occasionally start acting as a keylogger. If somehow this happens (let's assume not intentionally), will it be the direct responsibility of the author? Legally, there is no entity behind that responsible for privacy (1), and honestly, I don't see even minimal reason to trust this software from a legal perspective. 1. https://refine.sh/privacy-policy

There's no reason to trust it from a technical perspective either. The app is unsandboxed. Easy enough to check from the CLI.

    codesign --display --verbose=4 Refine.app 2>&1 | grep sandbox
Apple provides a network client entitlement[1] that sandboxed apps must have, to connect to the network. Since this app isn't sandboxed, that restriction doesn't apply.

Personally, I only use software that was either built on my machine or downloaded off of the Mac App Store (MAS apps have the be mandatory sandboxed).

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#114

Post by smcleod »

larnon wrote: post #54
smcleod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only whole world uses American English" ... I think you might be living in a bubble. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

He is actually correct. I am neither American nor English.

That's certainly not the case in the majority of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa, West Africa, South Africa, PNG, Fiji, Philippines, South Asia and South East Asia. Really it's mostly just America and Canada that use American.

I could cite many sources but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s... provides a simple view.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#115

Post by NewsaHackO »

rafram wrote: post #103
cjs_ac wrote: post #25

The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…

Describing American English as “simplified” English is textbook bad linguistics. It’s a different dialect, not an inherently simpler or more complex one.

Yea, it’s insane to try and an entire country’s writing dialect as simplified. I guess it would be the only way to show off his snobbery though.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#116

Post by johnisgood »

cjs_ac wrote: post #106
johnisgood wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the difference between practice vs. practise was that the latter is British. My spell checker (US English) does not like "practise" though, it is underlined with red. UK English, however, does not underline "practise" with red. So is it really not the case that "practice" is US English and "practise" is UK English? Because based on the spell checker, that seems to be the case.

> So is it really not the case that "practice" is US English and "practise" is UK English? Correct: practice is a noun, and practise is a verb, in non-US English. I don't have my (twenty-volume) copy of the Oxford English Dictionary to hand, but Wiktionary has an explanation under 'usage notes': https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/practise

> British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South African English spelling distinguishes between practice (a noun) and practise (a verb), analogously with advice and advise though without an analogous difference in pronunciation. In American English, the spelling practice is commonly used for both noun and verb.

I see.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#117

Post by malfist »

JLCarveth wrote: post #65
dreamcompiler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So apparently the tool is slanted toward American English where the non-word practise is properly treated as a spelling error like colour . If you use these words in writing for Americans and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.

Americans finding anyone else arrogant is quite rich.

That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#118

Post by reconnecting »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #113
reconnecting wrote: post #99

There is no guarantee that this software will not occasionally start acting as a keylogger. If somehow this happens (let's assume not intentionally), will it be the direct responsibility of the author? Legally, there is no entity behind that responsible for privacy (1), and honestly, I don't see even minimal reason to trust this software from a legal perspective. 1. https://refine.sh/privacy-policy

There's no reason to trust it from a technical perspective either. The app is unsandboxed. Easy enough to check from the CLI. codesign --display --verbose=4 Refine.app 2>&1 | grep sandbox Apple provides a network client entitlement[1] that sandboxed apps must have, to connect to the network. Since this app isn't sandboxed, that restriction doesn't apply. Personally, I only use software that was either built on my mac…

Most of the time, both legal and technical misalignments walk together. Thank you for noticing this.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#119

Post by BoredPositron »

malfist wrote: post #117
JLCarveth wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans finding anyone else arrogant is quite rich.

That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with

I guess it's more of a shit throwing contest than an artistic practice.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#120

Post by ho_schi »

gardnr wrote: post #34

You can use a local instance of LanguageTool in a docker container for this: https://github.com/gardner/LocalLanguageTool

There is also a readily installable Flatpak:

https://github.com/sonnyp/Eloquent

It is restricted by Flatpak (i.e. Control Groups and Namespaces):

   * No file-system access
   * No access to devices
   * Network Access is allowed (API of Languagetool is only reachable via REST?)
It is fat. But that's more an issue of Java itself. I only wish Languagetool didn't use Java, which is fine on a servers but horrible on personal-computers. Implemented in C, C++ or Rust and it would be probably already part of LibreOffice. Sonny Piers is the packager Flatpak, a prominent ex-member of GNOME board. He was removed due some Code-Of-Conduct thing which nobody can explain, due to issues within the Code-Of-Conduct.

PS: LibreOffice had to fight years to remove Java which plagued the project.

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