Repo RizzCopy

write-good: The Free Writing Linter That Found 146 Weak Spots in Our Blog

A free, open-source linter for English prose. We ran it on 12 of our own blog posts: 146 flags in 7,544 words. Here's what it caught and what it gets wrong.

Aditya Jain2 Oct 2026Updated 4 Oct 20262 min read

write-good is a free, open-source linter that flags weak spots in English prose: passive voice, weasel words and filler. pSkyro Labs ran it on 12 of its own posts and got 146 flags in 7,544 words.

What it is

write-good is a "naive linter for English prose". It doesn't rewrite anything. It points at words that usually make writing weaker: passive voice, weasel words, filler. Free, MIT-licensed, and it runs with one command.

See it in action

We ran version 1.0.8 on 12 published pSkyro posts: 3 Vibe Check posts and 9 blog articles.

The numbers

146 flags in 7,544 words. About one every 52 words. Our cleanest post (Glassmorphism) had 2. The worst had 19.

What it flagged

73 weakening words ("just", "only", "very"), 30 weasel words ("many", "few"), 27 passive voice, 10 wordy phrases, 5 repeats.

Our top offenders: "just" (15 times), "only" (12), "many" (7) and "exactly" (7).

One real sentence, before and after

Before (3 flags: "usually", "all of", "several"):

Reviews, surveys and tickets usually live in different tools. AI can look across all of them and point out when the same complaint shows up in several places.

After (0 flags):

Reviews, surveys and support tickets live in different tools. AI scans them together and flags any complaint that shows up in two or more places.

Shorter. More specific. Same meaning.

Where it gets it wrong

It's naive by design. It flagged "early" 6 times, even in "early-stage research", where the word is doing real work. Read every flag as a question: does this word earn its place?

Why it matters

A coaching business sends a weekly newsletter. Nobody edits it, and it's full of "just wanted to share" and "really excited". Running write-good before hitting send takes a minute and makes every email sound more confident.

Try it yourself

Needs Node.js 18+. Takes about a minute.

# check any text or markdown file
npx write-good my-post.md
# only check passive voice and weasel words
npx write-good my-post.md --no-adverb --no-tooWordy --no-so --no-thereIs

What this means for your marketing

Clear copy lifts ad and landing page results, because people decide in seconds. pSkyro Labs applies the same standard to ads and pages in its performance marketing service; to see what a click is worth to you, try the break-even ROAS calculator. Next in the series: Pa11y, the free accessibility checker.

The verdict

Worth 10 minutes before you publish anything. Treat its flags as questions, not rules.

Free, fast and honest. Exactly what a second pair of eyes should be. Star it on GitHub.

FAQ

Is write-good free?

Yes. It is open source under the MIT licence and runs on your own computer with Node.js. No account or subscription.

What does write-good check?

It flags passive voice, weasel words like 'many' or 'usually', wordy phrases like 'all of', repeated words, adverbs and sentences starting with 'so' or 'there is'.

Can write-good replace Grammarly or Hemingway?

For style, partly. It catches the same weak-writing patterns as Hemingway's highlights. It does not check spelling or grammar, so keep a spell-checker too.