icelandic-proofread

Icelandic Proofread — open Icelandic proofreading

Corrects Icelandic spelling and grammar from the command line, built on GreynirCorrect — the MIT-licensed correction engine published by Miðeind ehf. Runs fully offline once installed; falls back to the public yfirlestur.is API only when the local engine is missing.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Miðeind ehf. This wraps only their openly published engine and public demo API. "Málfríður" / "Málstaður" are Miðeind's paid products and are not used here.

The one thing to know

Two correction levels:

Level	Fixes	When
full (default)	spelling + grammar/case	clean a draft end-to-end
spelling	token-level spelling only	conservative; you keep grammar control

full applies every correction automatically (the "accept all" behaviour) and reports every change so nothing is silent.

Optional: native-fluency polish (--polish)

The rule engine fixes mechanics (spelling, case, agreement) but cannot judge native cadence or strip translationese. Add --polish to sandwich a Gemini Flash pass between two engine passes:

engine-correct  →  Gemini polishes for native fluency  →  engine-correct (guardrail)

The engine is the bread, Gemini is the filling: any inflection error the model introduces is caught by the second deterministic pass, so the LLM never gets the last word on mechanics. It's opt-in and secret-free — runs only with --polish and a GEMINI_API_KEY present (env, ./.env, or ~/.config/icelandic-proofread/.env). Without a key it errors clearly instead of skipping silently. Model defaults to gemini-3-flash-preview, overridable with --model / $GEMINI_MODEL (e.g. gemini-3.5-flash, gemini-3.1-flash-lite).

python3 proofread.py check --polish \
  --text "Við erum spennt að tilkynna að nýji vefurinn okkar er núna lifandi."
# → Við erum spennt að tilkynna að nýi vefurinn okkar sé nú kominn í loftið.
#   rule pass: nýji→nýi · Gemini: removes the "er lifandi" calque, adds subjunctive

Setup (once)

bash install.sh          # creates a venv and installs reynir-correct (MIT)

No install? The tool still runs via the yfirlestur.is API fallback — but local is recommended (offline, newer engine, and it doesn't lean on Miðeind's free public endpoint).

Step 0 — which engine is live

python3 proofread.py status
# {"local": true, "local_version": "4.1.3", "api": "...", "default_engine": "local"}

Step 1 — proofread

A short string:

python3 proofread.py check --text "Mér finst þetta gott."
# → Mér finnst þetta gott.

A whole document (preserves blank-line paragraph structure):

python3 proofread.py proofread --in draft.txt --out clean.txt
# stderr: ✓ Yfirlesið með GreynirCorrect — N ábending(ar). 👌

Full structured report (corrected text + every suggestion with codes):

python3 proofread.py check --text "…" --json

Options

Flag	Meaning
--level full|spelling	correction level (default full)
--engine auto|local|api	engine (default auto → local if installed, else api)
--polish	add the Gemini native-fluency sandwich (needs GEMINI_API_KEY)
--model <id>	Gemini model for --polish (default $GEMINI_MODEL or gemini-3-flash-preview)
--json	full JSON report on stdout (corrected text + suggestions[] + polish_changes[])
--quiet	suppress the stderr summary line
--out <file>	write corrected text to a file (proofread)

How it works (so you can debug it)

• Local engine uses reynir_correct.check_errors(..., format="text") at the chosen level for clean, properly detokenized prose, and check_with_stats() to list every annotation (code, original, suggestion).
• API engine POSTs to https://yfirlestur.is/correct.api. Spelling comes from the response's corrected field; grammar fixes are grafted on by lifting each annotated span out of original and string-replacing it — applied only when the span occurs exactly once, so a misaligned offset can never corrupt output.
• Documents are split on blank lines; each paragraph is corrected independently and the blank-line structure is restored exactly on reassembly.
• --polish runs, per paragraph: engine-correct → gemini_polish_paragraph (JSON-mode, temp 0.1, "preserve meaning/length/terms") → engine-correct again. Gemini failures fail safe (paragraph kept as-is, error recorded in polish_changes[]); the document is never corrupted by a bad model response.

Behaviour rules (for the agent)

• Without --polish, the corrected text is exactly what GreynirCorrect produced — never invent or "improve" corrections by hand.
• --polish is the right call when the goal is native-quality client-facing copy (it removes translationese). For raw/verbatim text or when the author's exact voice must be preserved, leave it off — Gemini will smooth phrasing.
• Always surface the suggestion count; for sensitive copy, prefer --level spelling and show the suggestion list rather than auto-applying grammar.
• For client/production text, show the before/after diff and get a go-ahead before overwriting the source.

Credits

Engine and public API by Miðeind ehf. — GreynirCorrect (MIT) and yfirlestur.is. This skill is an independent open-source wrapper.

@author Magnús Smári | smarason.is · MIT License