Elijah Potter
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elijahpotter.dev
Elijah Potter
@elijahpotter.dev
Author of the Harper grammar checker

https://elijahpotter.dev

https://writewithharper.com
Reposted by Elijah Potter
We love to see Harper getting some attention!

Open source, private, and developer-focused. Give it a try! writewithharper.com
January 17, 2026 at 12:00 AM
Great piece. I'm thrilled that this was the first result that popped up when I searched for "open source grammar checker".

www.makeuseof.com/stopped-payi...
I stopped paying for Grammarly once I found out there's a free open-source alternative
I thought Grammarly was essential. It wasn’t.
www.makeuseof.com
January 16, 2026 at 10:14 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
With Language Tool and Grammarly embracing AI, and somewhat questionable privacy practices to begin with, I am so thankful that Harper exists. It's everything I need and nothing I don't.

https://writewithharper.com/

#grammar #extension
Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker
Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke.
writewithharper.com
January 13, 2026 at 2:32 PM
I've observed a high degree of specialization of language between academic fields. I've been thinking about how we can make Harper more helpful for the specialists.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/ima...
Imagine a Weir Marketplace
I've come to the realization that there is a high degree of specialization among academic fields. If we embrace this specialization through customization, we could gain an advantage over other grammar...
elijahpotter.dev
January 12, 2026 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
Now there's an LSP for text. Harper is a modern grammar checker, open source, and you integrate it with your Markdown editor by adding an LSP config for Markdown. One doesn't exist for Markdown on Emacs (yet), but... :-)

writewithharper.com/docs/integra...
Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker
Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke.
writewithharper.com
January 8, 2026 at 8:21 PM
Someone has taken advantage of Tatum's open-source license and remixed it into something even more capable. I highly suggest you check out penview.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/som...

#nvim #productivity #coding
Someone Remixed Tatum
A quick shout-out
elijahpotter.dev
January 1, 2026 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
Harper sounds amazing! Ellipsus doesn't have any advanced grammar checking abilities today, but it's something we would like to look into in the future.

Let's get in touch!
December 8, 2025 at 5:18 PM
I recently did some snooping (through Dependabot) on what open source projects have been using Harper. Since I last checked, there are some new ones.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/pro...
Projects Using Harper
I just found out that some new projects are using Harper. Could yours be next?
elijahpotter.dev
December 29, 2025 at 9:38 PM
I've been experimenting with using Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate rules for my programming language, Weir, and I'm really excited about the potential.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/gen...
Generating Weir Code with LLMs
Some experimentation shows that LLMs are extremely effective at understanding and generating DSL code.
elijahpotter.dev
December 22, 2025 at 8:17 PM
I've been tweaking the keywords to make them more descriptive and less clunky – I replaced "declare" and "set" with "let" and "expr," and you can see the changes in the example code.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/upd...
Updates on the Weir Language
In [my last blog post](./building_the_weir_language), I described the why, what, and how of the Weir programming language. Before signing off for the day, I just wanted to give a few updates on the We...
elijahpotter.dev
December 18, 2025 at 2:53 PM
I'm excited to share that Harper can now apply title case to text! It's a simple but useful feature, especially for ensuring consistency in titles like the ones on this blog.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/har...
Harper Can Apply Titlecase
In case you didn't know: Harper can convert text to title case! This has been around for a long time, but we haven't really talked about it publicly.
elijahpotter.dev
December 17, 2025 at 4:13 AM
I've been tinkering with a new language for expressing grammatical rules, with the goal of making it easier for people to create and share style guides that Harper can understand.

If you all have any opinions on syntax or anything, let me know!

elijahpotter.dev/articles/bui...
Building the Weir Language
A domain-specific language for describing patterns in natural language.
elijahpotter.dev
December 16, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
I was looking for grammar/spell-check language servers to use in Neovim and came across Harper (writewithharper.com)

Turns out it also has extensions for Firefox/Chrome. I don't use Grammarly, but for people who do, could be a nicer, more private alternative — it's local-only and open-source.
Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker
Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke.
writewithharper.com
December 14, 2025 at 5:13 PM
It's nice to see Harper on this list.

medium.com/macoclock/st...
Stop Paying for Grammarly: 3 Free Alternatives in 2025
I left Grammarly, and my writing got better.
medium.com
December 15, 2025 at 8:09 PM
It seems like Harper and @ellipsus.com share a lot of core values. Perhaps we could collaborate on something?
December 8, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Today, we published Harper's 1.0.0 release. It's a huge milestone, and I'd like to discuss why it took so long, why we're doing it now, and what's next for the project.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/har...
Harper Turns 1.0 Today
Harper finally releases a `1.0.0`
elijahpotter.dev
December 3, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
Our very own @ma.tt joined the TBPN crew to close out #StateOfTheWord yesterday. They talked about WordPress 6.9, open source, @beeper, and how AI is changing the web. Did you miss it? Check it out now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQh...
December 3, 2025 at 7:37 PM
If you had shown this article to the Elijah Potter from a year ago, he would have agreed with most of what it says. I was of the strong opinion that collaboration was fundamentally counterproductive to getting sh*t done. Since then, I've completely changed my tune.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/re:...
Re Collaboration Sucks
Why collaboration still matters when kept intentional.
elijahpotter.dev
November 18, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
Harper is in Cursor and VS Code · A grammar checker for your code editor · ilo.im/162w5w by Elijah Potter #Development #Extensions
Harper Is In Cursor And Visual Studio Code
A boon if you comment your code.
ilo.im
March 21, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
“We adopted #rustlang for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density ... with Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.”

security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...
Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in ...
security.googleblog.com
November 13, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
For the orphans of Grammarly, I present Harper.

Harper is a free open-source English grammar checker.

It runs on-device, that means you have 100% certainty it doesn't violate your copyright by training large language models.

FUCK🖕AI

writewithharper.com
Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker
Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke.
writewithharper.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Elijah Potter
I find it very cool that harper (the grammar / prose) can correctly identify "a" vs "an" with initialisms
November 14, 2025 at 12:47 AM
I had the incredible opportunity to speak at WordCamp U.S. at Matt's suggestion. I met a number of wonderful, kind, and inviting people. It was my first WordCamp and first conference talk, so I was naturally nervous. The community made it feel easy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-jY...
WordCamp US 2025: Elijah Potter "Your Words, Your Brain, Your Device"
YouTube video by WordPress
www.youtube.com
September 11, 2025 at 9:39 PM
I've been working on making the UI for grammar checking better, for everyone.

elijahpotter.dev/articles/bet...
Better Interfaces for Grammar Checking
Grammar checking can be cumbersome, especially when it’s sloth gets in the way of your thinking. That’s part of why so many people prefer Harper over Grammarly or LanguageTool.
elijahpotter.dev
July 29, 2025 at 2:14 PM