simple-english for pi

Write for human, not for agent.

You can teach an agent plain-English prose with a skill or a prompt. It writes clean prose in the first paragraph and slop again by the third. This linter keeps the agent honest: it reads what the agent wrote and names every broken rule. Send the findings back, and the agent corrects its own text.

Your API keys are rotated by the service every 90 days — you will need to update them if you get a 401; don't panic, simply re-run the setup command, which regenerates the credentials without any downtime.

The service rotates your API keys every 90 days. If you get a 401, update them. Do not panic. Re-run the setup command. It regenerates the credentials without any downtime.

The linter covers Markdown prose plus code comments in Python, Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, Java, C, C++, and C#. It also reads Objective-C, Kotlin, Swift, Scala, Dart, PHP, Perl, Elixir, Lua, R, Haskell, Zig, SQL, and bash. It reads comments in config formats and markup as well: YAML, TOML, INI, Makefile, Dockerfile, HTML, and XML.

What it checks

• Voice: say who does the action.
• Tense: simple tenses only, no present perfect.
• Modals: can, will, must only.
• Punctuation: no em-dashes, no semicolons.
• Contractions: write every word in full.
• Sentence shape: condition before command, no -ing phrase after a comma.
• Word choice: about 50 substitution rules, from leverage to in conclusion.
• Counts: 20 words per sentence in list items, 25 in paragraphs, six sentences per paragraph at most.

It lints Markdown prose plus code comments in Python, Ruby, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, Java, C#, C++, Kotlin, bash, and YAML. The full list, with a wrong and a right example for each rule, is docs/RULES.md.

Install

pi install npm:pi-simple-english

Install it for one project only by adding -l and running the command from the project root.

The tool calls the se CLI. That CLI ships as a Ruby gem. Install it once, before the first lint:

gem install simple_english

What you get

The se_lint tool lints a file or a directory on demand. Every file edit lints too. The findings land in the edit result, so the agent fixes them in the same turn. Each finding carries a line number, a rule ID, and a fix hint:

README.md:12:31-32: [SE_NO_SEMICOLON] ";" - Write two sentences, or name the relation.

The write-simple-english skill carries the rules, so the agent writes clean prose the first time. The lint-simple-english skill tells the agent to lint the prose it writes and fix every finding.

Toggle

Turn the linter off for the session with /se off. That hides the se_lint tool and stops the edit enforcement. Turn it back on with /se on, or run /se to flip the current state. The status line shows ● simple-english while it is on.

The toggle lasts for the session. To stop the linter for every session, uninstall the package: pi uninstall npm:pi-simple-english.

Versions

The package version tracks the gem version. The changelog lives in the repository:

https://github.com/TonyCTHsu/simple-english/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md