Vale

Vale is a linter for prose. It parses Markdown, AsciiDoc and reStructuredText, skips code blocks and checks the text against style rules stored as YAML in the repository, so writing conventions can be enforced in the editor and in CI, much like code style. Packaged styles cover the Google, Microsoft and Red Hat documentation guides; others check for inclusive language or readability, and you can write your own. Vale has been part of docs-as-code toolchains for years, but the volume of LLM-drafted documentation, ADRs and PR descriptions makes it more relevant now. Packages such as vail-ai-tells flag the phrasing typical of generated text, and Vale works well as one of the feedback sensors for coding agents, allowing an agent to revise a draft before anyone reads it.

Vale's checks are deterministic word and pattern matches, which can catch surface-level habits but miss weak reasoning or invented detail. Vale also depends largely on one maintainer, and our use so far has been by individuals working on their own writing rather than by client teams.