Incorporating Vale into writers' and editors' workflow in 2025?

[bonfield]

I have been trying to make Vale part of my workflow for about two years, and do it in a way that could include my less technical colleagues. While they know Markdown, they aren't going to learn Emacs or Vim, and would prefer a GUI that feels familiar and is relatively easy to learn. Is there a well maintained, well documented, GUI integration with FOSS or low cost editing software that makes easy things easy?

[daobrien]

This would be a bit easier to answer if we had more info about your work environment, etc. For starters, you might like to investigate the available plug-ins for various editors that enable those editors to run Vale styles on the fly. Many of the writers in my team use VS Code, and they use a plug-in that displays what Vale believes are issues in the editing window. (I don't use VS Code myself so can't say much more than that. I use Vale on the CLI.)

[daobrien]

https://vale.sh/docs/vale-ini

Maybe start here. Scroll down to Integrations.

[bonfield]

I apologize for asking a general question, and appreciate your response. I asked my questions because I would like to have a solution for my colleagues' needs and my own. I think a lot of other people who are not familiar with the command line, Vim, or Emacs are likely to have similar questions.

My question was based on the Integrations section of the documentation. That is what I meant when I referred to well maintained and well documented.

As you noted, VS Code seems like it should be the primary choice. Unfortunately, there are numerous, significant disclaimers and limitations associated with the Vale + VS Code package, the present documentation presents installation and use challenges even for experienced developers, and I have not been able to make it work with VSCodium. Please know that I am not complaining about this project, which I appreciate. My only interest is in finding a path that is a bit more beginner friendly and allows for greater privacy.

I had Vale working well with JetBrains WriterSide when it was a standalone program. Now that WriterSide is only a plugin, I have not found a good combination of ease of installation, ease of use, and price considerations.

The Obsidian client has not been updated in four years and was archived by its owner over two years ago.

The Sublime client has not been updated in 12 months and only has 223 installs, so it seems sensible to worry about its viability.

It seems clear that Vale has focused in the past on well documented, well supported integrations with FOSS or low cost, beginner friendly clients. Are there integrations or is there documentation that I am missing or questioning unnecessarily?

[daobrien]

ok, so first things first: I doubt that I'll be able to answer your question because a) I don't use any of the integrations, and b) I'm not a coder. I don't use Emacs, but do use Vim for some things. My primary editor is Kate (part of KDE). I haven't used any of the other editors you mentioned.

wrt beginner friendly, a couple of other members of my team are not exactly "techie", but they picked up using VS Code + plug-in with no trouble. I don't know what sort of privacy concerns you have. I'm sure someone else from this project will chime in soon.

[onemaxsim]

@bonfield I used to be a legal and business editor and proofreader, and I used PerfectIt in Word. PerfectIt is a plugin/add-on for Word (paid for, but affordable) that provides several style guides and automated error checking. When I first stumbled on Vale, my first thoughts were it was a coder's PerfectIt... Anyway - unsure if you use Microsoft stuff, but hope that my suggestion is useful.

[ChrisChinchilla]

So for ages I have been trialling "similar" tools to Vale and recently compiled some, I am also looking at Antidote. But I agree, Vale has never worked so well for less technical people or tools.

There is now my MCP server, but that's still quite technical, for the time being. I am also trying to slowly work on a Vale Desktop type tool, but that is a lot of work and needs a different version for each platform…

So, tldr; it would be great to get Vale to less technical audiences, and there is slow progress, but it's not there yet.

[bonfield]

Thanks for posting this video. I've tried Grazie and found it useful when I had access to WriterSide and before JetBrains incorporated AI into Grazie's standard workflow. I will not use an AI that surveils and edits my writing. That's also my problem with VSCode: telemetry and other built-in surveillance. I want a prose linter that I control, that lets me choose a style guide for my nonprofit, primarily volunteer-based organization (we can't afford to buy licenses for all of our volunteers), and lets me modify our organization's style guide as needed. Vale seems closer to achieving that aim than any of its competitors.