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Trying Out textlint for My Hands-on Guide

3 min read

I realized that a week of 2026 has already passed, and I still hadn’t written my first blog post of the year. So I decided to start the year with a light technical topic.

Recently, I’ve been working on a hands-on guide for my development team using Claude Code. Since I was already revising the content, I thought it would be a good chance to improve the writing quality as well, so I decided to introduce textlint into the workflow.

At first, I tried using textlint-rule-preset-ja-technical-writing.
It’s a very useful preset that helps polish writing and make it more consistent.

On the other hand, this hands-on guide is meant to be a bit more explanatory and conversational in tone. I still want to leave some softer, instructional expressions in the text. When I actually applied the preset, I felt that it nudged the writing more strongly toward structure and uniformity than I wanted for this document, which made me think a bit about how well it matched the purpose.

So at the moment, I’m using a combination of:

  • textlint-rule-preset-japanese
  • textlint-rule-preset-ai-writing

and gradually tuning the rules as I go.

With this setup, my impression so far is:

  • textlint still catches sentences that are difficult to read
  • repetitive expressions are reduced
  • the explanatory tone of the document is easier to preserve

Overall, it currently feels like a good balance for my use case.

That said, this impression is based on my writing style and this specific document, so I don’t assume the same setup will be ideal for every type of writing.

The biggest question I keep running into is:

“How far should I go in fixing what textlint points out?”

If I fix everything, the writing starts to feel a bit too polished.
But if I ignore too much, there’s not much point in linting in the first place.

For now, I’m taking the approach of:

  • only fixing things that clearly make the text easier to understand for the reader

I expect that this attitude will gradually evolve as I gain more experience using textlint in everyday writing.

So at this stage, my textlint setup is very much still a work in progress.
I find it interesting that writing quality can also be treated as part of the “development process,” and I plan to keep adjusting things step by step.

I’m hoping to continue sharing things at a relaxed pace in 2026 as well.
Thanks as always for reading.

Note: This post is based purely on my personal experience and does not intend to recommend or dismiss any specific preset.