Introduction

Vale is a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose. It's open source, fast, and highly customizable.

📝 It doesn't attempt to teach you how to write; it's a tool for writers. In other words, Vale focuses on allowing its users to create their own collections of rules (known as styles) rather than providing its own advice.

🔒 It's 100% offline, private, and secure. While other tools and services have to explain to you how they will/won't use your data (often in long, legalese-filled documents), all we have to say is that we don't have access to it.

📦 It's a standalone, easy-to-install binary. Unlike other tools, Vale doesn't require you to install and configure a particular programming language and its related tooling (such as Python/pip or Node.js/npm).

Community

Vale has a growing community of users from around the world. Check out the user-contributed resources below.

Connect
GitHub Discussions	Ask questions, share configurations, and engage in general Vale-related discussion.
GitHub Issues	Report a bug, submit a feature request, or start a PR.
Slack (`#testthedocs`)	Discuss Vale with the Write the Docs community (join here, if you're not already a member).

Have your own video, post, or configuration? Feel free to submit it here.

Users

An implemetation of a custom, in-house style for the Homebrew docs.

A custom style, vocab, and output format for the Chef reference documentation.

A custom style built on top of the Microsoft Writing Style Guide.

A custom style and vocab for Netlify CMS website.

A custom configuration for Hugo-powered Markdown docs.

An extensive Vale configuration for various GitLab projects.

A basic Vale configuration for Spotify's Backstage project.

A custom style for the CockroachDB user documentation.

An advanced Vale configuration for the Eclipse Che Documentation.

A custom style for the Write the Docs website.

A configuration for the Mautic project based on the Google Developer Documentation Style Guide.

A proselint-based Vale configuration for the webpack website.

A fork of the Vale GitHub action maintained by Algolia.

A custom style for the Datadog documentation.

A custom style for the Rackspace Expert Insights Technical Blog.

A custom style and configuration for the Vaadin docs.

A Vale Validation add-on for the Oxygen XML editor.

Syntax-aware proofreading for your Laravel application.

Articles

How To Automate Documentation Workflow For Developers (Portia Burton)
First steps with the Vale prose linter (Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti)
Writing Articles with Vale (Thedro Neely)
Linting your content using Vale (Shweta Shetye)
Docs as Code at Linode (Nathan Melehan, Linode)
Testing docs with Vale - Part 1: Installing the Vale CLI (Deanna Thompson)
Prose linting with Vale and Emacs (Duncan Mac-Vicar P.)
Linting the Buildkite Docs (Sam Wright, Buildkite)
Sofie's Docs Diary Vol. 16: Writing in style (Sofie Toft Kristensen, Umbraco)
Linting my prose with Vale (Alex Wilson)
Automated Enforcement of our Style Guide (Joe Shindelar, Drupalize.Me)
Testing your Documentation (Write the Docs)
Vale for Spelling, Grammar, Style and Readability Linting (Chris Ward)

Videos

Documentation as code (Part 3): A Linting How To - The Vale Linter in Action (Tag1)
Docs-as-Code Workflow for your (API) Developer Portal (Pronovix)
Day 1 Lightning Talk #3 - Write the Docs Prague 2019 (Write the Docs)
Reducing Negative and Biased Language in Documentation (All Things Open)

Privacy

Privacy is an important consideration in all Vale-related development decisions. We've gone to great lengths to ensure that our software has the utmost respect for our users and their content.

For us, it's not merely about what we say—it's about what we do.

Vale

The Vale command-line tool serves as the foundation (functionality-wise) for all of our software and integrations. It's free, open source, and permissively licensed.

Vale is distributed as a self-contained, standalone binary, and it works entirely offline: We have absolutely zero access to any content linted by Vale.

Vale Server

Vale Server is a graphical user interface (GUI), web-based dashboard, and HTTP server built on top of Vale.

It runs on localhost and uses a local vale executable to perform all of its linting, so it also inherits all of Vale's content-related privacy guarantees.

Integrations

When you use Vale with a third-party integration, you also need to consider their own security and privacy policies.

Wherever possible, we try to abide by the strictest level of security practices. For example, see our blog post, Taking Vale Server to the web, in which we describe how Vale's Chrome extension achieved the very rare distinction of being warning-free according to Google.

Introduction