Content Gate Kit — free sample

The check no prose linter does: did I already publish this, in different words?

Vale, textlint, proselint and alex all lint one document in isolation. None of them can see that today's draft has the same skeleton as last Tuesday's post. That is the gate people actually need once they publish on a schedule.

This repo ships the substance gate, working and unrestricted, so you can judge the code before paying for the rest. The similarity gate — the one nothing else does — is in the full kit.

git clone https://github.com/zxcv0952290292-lang/content-gate-kit-free
cd content-gate-kit-free
python3 cli.py --demo

=== 01_blocked_no_substance.json  ->  BLOCKED
    - no takeaway: one concrete thing the reader can do or check
    - opening is a conclusion, not a hook: 'Everyone should start saving money.'
    - nothing checkable in the whole piece (needs >=2 numbers/rules/named things)

=== 04_pass.json  ->  PASS

No dependencies. No API key. No model call. No network. Python 3.8+. Under a millisecond.

How this relates to Vale

Use both. They do not overlap.

If you want a style guide enforced, install Vale — it is free, excellent, and this is not trying to replace it. If your problem is that everything you publish is starting to feel the same, no linter solves that.

The four gates

Full kit — four gates, the n8n workflow, and the config presets: $29 on Gumroad

Why these rules and not other rules

Every rule was written after something real went out wrong, and the comment above it says which. That is the part you cannot get from a linter: not "here are some quality heuristics" but "this exact sentence shape shipped nine smug replies, six of which were identical in structure."

A rule without its incident is the first thing someone deletes. So they all kept their incidents.

Usage

from gatekit import check

r = check(
    text=draft,
    takeaway="one concrete thing the reader can do",
    source="where the numbers came from",
)
r["pass"]      # bool
r["reasons"]   # list of strings, empty when it passes

Shell / CI — exit code 0 passes, 1 blocks:

python3 cli.py --file draft.json && ./publish.sh

Config

{ "takeaway_min": 12, "hard_min": 2, "require_layers": false }

require_layers is strict mode. It additionally demands an operating layer (a verb plus a place the reader can open — "read the Total column") and a numbers layer (the difference converted into a figure — 0.22% vs 0.57%, that is 2.6x).

If a gate blocks the same good draft three times, loosen it. A rule that makes you rewrite good work into compliance is worse than the problem it prevents.

What this is not

• Not a grammar or plagiarism checker
• Not an AI-detector
• It does not call a model, so it cannot judge whether a claim is true. It checks that a claim has a source attached, not that the source is right.

Licence

See LICENSE.txt. Use it in your own and your clients' projects. Do not resell the source as a competing product.