Automated Spelling & Grammar Checks on Blog Posts 2.0

Sunnary

I wrote a post a while back on how I setup an AI agent to run when I pushed files to Git. While this was cool, there were 2 major issues with it:

1. Posts weren’t getting checked locally and would be different to the live copies
2. The AI agent was using tokens for calling the Open AI API, so a bit of an unnecessary expense.

After rebuilding my Astro setup over the weekened, I noticed my live posts are still riddled with spelling errors. Turns out deleting the entire blog folder might have been a bit rash. The AI script and config that Git was using had gone.

Tonight I took the opportunity to save myself a few tokens and use a local spelling and grammar check instead. The AI generated output below outlines what was setup.

ChatGPT summary:

I recently wired up a clean, automated system to catch and fix typos, passive voice, and lazy phrasing in my Markdown blog posts. It now runs automatically before every commit, and even auto-corrects spelling where possible.

Here’s how I set it up using:

• vale for grammar and style
• codespell for spell-checking
• pre-commit to run it all before every Git commit

✅ Step 1: Add Vale for Grammar & Style

In the project root, I created a .vale.ini file:

StylesPath = styles
MinAlertLevel = suggestion

[*.md]
BasedOnStyles = write-good, spelling

Then I added a spelling config under styles/spelling/Spelling.yml:

extends: spelling
message: "'%s' may be a misspelling"
level: warning

And an ignore list for valid custom terms in styles/spelling/accept.txt:

ProveItsMe
Astro
Vercel
Supabase
Figma
CLI

Vale uses this to flag passive voice, weasel words, E-Prime violations, and unknown words.

✅ Step 2: Use Codespell to Auto-Fix Typos

To auto-correct spelling mistakes, I installed codespell:

pipx install codespell

I also created .codespell-ignore to avoid flagging terms like product names:

ProveItsMe
Supabase
Astro

To auto-fix, I ran:

codespell --ignore-words=.codespell-ignore -w src/data/blog/

This corrected things like:

• sould → should
• depoy → deploy

✅ Step 3: Automate It with pre-commit

To make this automatic before every Git commit, I set up pre-commit:

pipx install pre-commit
pre-commit install

Then I added this .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/codespell-project/codespell
    rev: v2.2.6
    hooks:
      - id: codespell
        args: ["--ignore-words=.codespell-ignore", "-w"]
        files: ^src/data/blog/.*\.md$

  - repo: https://github.com/errata-ai/vale
    rev: v3.0.0
    hooks:
      - id: vale
        name: Vale Linter
        entry: vale
        language: system
        types: [markdown]

📋 Logging

To see all grammar/spelling issues:

vale src/data/blog/ > vale.log

You can also use --output=JSON if you want to parse the output later or generate dashboards.

🔧 Common Fixes I Made

• Fixed depoy → deploy
• Fixed sould → should
• Removed .vale.yml syntax errors (ignore: is not valid inside YAML config)
• Fixed PATH issues after installing pre-commit and pipx (pipx ensurepath)

🎯 Result

Now every time I commit:

• 🧠 Grammar issues are flagged
• ✍️ Spelling mistakes are auto-fixed
• 🚫 I don’t accidentally publish typos or lazy writing

It’s fast, reliable, and doesn’t depend on GPT or cloud APIs.