Yes! I looked into languagetool last week to see if I could host it locally on my Synology. They have an interesting page about how, after setting up the initial 200MB install, one can enable n-gram checks[0], which requires an additional 8GB of storage and an SSD. I haven't tackled that yet, but it's on my list!

[0]: https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat...

I run the local server works well as a spelling/grammar checking when using the ngrams. About ten gig in size total. The browser extension is just so-so, I don't love the UI even now but considering the privacy and quality it is hard to be disappointed, there's nothing else out there.

If anyone wants to get set up fast on Windows:

- Server Doc/Download Link: https://dev.languagetool.org/http-server

- ngram Doc/Download Link: https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat...

I've had success with Amazon Corretto jre8 64x for my Java[0][1] and I use this bat file to launch it upon reboot (put it in the same folder as languagetool-server.jar):

     SET PATH=C:\program files\Amazon Corretto\jre8\bin\
     start javaw -cp languagetool-server.jar org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8081 --allow-origin "\*" -l en-US --languageModel "C:\LanguageTool\LanguageTool-5.4\ngram"

Set path just adds jre8 to bat's path context (there are multiple other ways to accomplish this). "start" just hides the black cmd window while the server is running. --languageModel must be the fully qualified path to the ngram.

You can automate executing this script either using Windows' scheduled tasks or just putting a shortcut to it in the Startup Folder (Win+R enter shell:common startup).

And don't forget to re-configure the browser extension. The setting is in Experimental Settings -> LanguageTool API Server URL -> Local Server

[0] https://corretto.aws/downloads/latest/amazon-corretto-8-x64-... [1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/corretto/latest/corretto-8-ug/do...

This is really awesome, love that they don't mystify the tech and make it accessible to folks who want to have control of the data.

Unfortunately, Language Tool seems limited to very basic mistakes.

It's Spanish demo only highlights some mechanical punctuation, gender, and plurality errors though it has one useful suggestion for a word that is too specialized.

Useful, for sure, but Grammarly is much more helpful, pointing out things like run-on sentences, clauses that lack parallel verbs, and things like that. Maybe it's better in English, but hopefully Language Tool can get to that level one day.

You can also run it in a Docker container and connect the LanguageTool VS Code extension to it. Works great for Markdown documents!

I use LanguageTool daily since some years and it’s been an absolute pleasure with both English and German. Add to that, the bugs I reported for both language were fixed in mere hours.

How limited is the open source version? Or put another way, what besides convenience would drive me to pay instead of maintain an open source instance?

heiliger strohsack! this is a good suggestion but the site itself seem to be very much like Grammarly or am I mistaken here?

The golden chalice appears to be a self-hosted solution!

>you can host your own server!

If a person needs a server to figure out grammar, it's time to go back to school or crack open an English book.