Project Overview

Gorby is a text analysis application that combines traditional writing analysis with modern AI-powered assistance to help you improve your writing and understand your text better. Whether you’re polishing an essay, optimizing content for SEO, or analyzing complex documents, Gorby provides both insights and suggestions to help you polish your writing.

Key Features

Gorby offers a complex set of features organized into core analysis tools and AI-powered enhancements:

Core Text Analysis

• Text Statistics: Get insights into your writing, including word count, sentence length, character count, and reading time estimates
• Keyword Density Analysis: Understand which words and phrases appear most frequently in your text, with support for n-grams and stop word filtering
• Readability Metrics: Ensure your writing is accessible to your target audience with multiple readability scores (Flesch Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Index, Dale-Chall, and more)
• Writing Goal Notifications: Stay on track with customizable writing objectives and progress tracking

Real-Time Text Highlighting

Gorby’s advanced highlighting system provides instant feedback on potential writing improvements:

• Hard-to-Read Sentences: Automatically identifies sentences that may be difficult to comprehend based on length and complexity
• Passive Voice Detection: Highlights passive voice constructions to encourage more active, engaging writing
• Adverb Analysis: Identifies overused adverbs that could be replaced with stronger verbs
• Qualifier Words: Detects weak qualifiers that may diminish the impact of your writing
• Words with Simpler Alternatives: Suggests more accessible vocabulary choices with contextual alternatives

Advanced Text Checks

Premium features include sophisticated analysis capabilities:

• Overused Words Analysis: Identifies words that appear too frequently in your text
• Repeated Words Detection: Catches redundant word usage within proximity
• Article Usage Checks: Analyzes proper article usage (a, an, the)
• Cliché Detection: Identifies common clichés and overused expressions
• Redundant Words Detection: Spots unnecessary repetition and wordiness
• SEO Analysis: Optimizes content for search engine visibility
• Paragraph Readability Scoring: Evaluates readability at the paragraph level

AI-Powered Writing Enhancement

Gorby integrates with large language models to provide intelligent writing assistance:

• Smart Rephrasing: Improve sentence structure and clarity while preserving your original meaning
• Contextual Synonyms: Get intelligent word suggestions that fit your specific context
• Tone Adjustments: Transform your text to match different tones (professional, casual, confident, diplomatic, persuasive, technical, friendly)
• Active Voice Conversion: Automatically convert passive voice sentences to active voice
• Readability Improvement: Simplify complex sentences while maintaining their original intent
• Text Expansion and Shortening: Adapt your content length to meet specific requirements
• Adverb Enhancement: Replace weak adverb-verb combinations with stronger alternatives

Organization and Workflow Features

• Text Tagging: Intuitively categorize and organize your content with custom tags
• Saved Texts: Store and manage multiple documents with local backup capabilities
• Rich Text Support: Full formatting capabilities with TipTap editor integration
• Find and Replace: Streamline editing with powerful search and replace functionality
• Export Options: Download your work in multiple formats

Technical Implementation

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, TailwindCSS
• State Management: Jotai
• Rich Text Editor: TipTap with custom extensions for text analysis
• Build Tool: Vite
• NLP Libraries: unified.js, compromise for advanced text processing
• Backend: PocketBase for user management and data persistence
• AI Integration: Custom API endpoints with usage tracking and credit system
• Landing Page: Astro

Development Approach

Gorby takes a hybrid approach that balances privacy with powerful functionality:

Client-Side Processing: Core text analysis happens locally in the browser, ensuring maximum data privacy. Features like keyword density analysis, readability scoring, and basic text checks never send data to external servers.

Selective AI Integration: AI-powered features use secure API endpoints only when explicitly requested by users, with transparent credit usage tracking.

Real-Time Analysis: Custom TipTap extensions provide instant feedback through a highlighting system that adapts to user preferences.

Plugin Architecture

The application features a modular plugin system for text analysis. Here are some of those plugins:

• Long Sentence Plugin: Configurable sentence length analysis with customizable thresholds
• Passive Voice Plugin: Pattern-based passive voice detection with comprehensive rule sets
• Adverb Plugin: Contextual adverb identification with improvement suggestions
• Qualifier Plugin: Weak qualifier detection to strengthen writing impact
• Simpler Words Plugin: Dictionary-based word simplification with contextual alternatives

Conclusion

Gorby has evolved from a simple text analyzer into a writing assistant that combines the best of traditional text analysis with modern AI capabilities. The application now serves as a complete writing companion, offering everything from basic word counts to AI-powered rephrasing and tone adjustment.

As the founder and sole developer, I’ve focused on creating a tool that genuinely helps writers improve their craft while respecting their privacy and creative process. The integration of AI features represents a careful balance between powerful assistance and user control, ensuring that writers remain in charge of their voice and style.

Whether you’re a professional writer, student, or content creator, Gorby provides the tools you need to refine your writing and communicate more effectively. If you’re interested in trying out Gorby or learning more about its implementation, visit Gorby.app.