Lixity

Read the patterns in your writing. Keep the evidence behind your decisions.

Lixity helps authors, editors and researchers see how a manuscript changes from chapter to chapter. It measures sentence lengths, word use, dialogue and tense, with chapter comparisons and paragraph views for reading the measured text. Its research workspace keeps source quotations and writing decisions connected. Your literary judgment guides what you keep or revise.

Matthias Fahsold developed Lixity as an architect and developer at ROST Services GmbH and used it while writing his own debut novel.

Try the example · Three-minute first look · Install · What you can do · Practical guides · v0.5.0 release notes

The example is a read-only report made from invented text. It needs no installation or manuscript upload. Documentation is English; you can read the results in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Dutch.

Try it in 30 seconds

Open the synthetic report (invented text), Effi Briest or Pride and Prejudice. Explore a chapter comparison, then open a paragraph to read its measurements. No install, account or upload is needed. The three-minute first look explains the results without requiring statistics background.

Built-in analysis runs on your computer. Optional external OCR workers have separate data boundaries.

Install and start

Install uv, then run on Windows, macOS or Linux:

uv tool install --python 3.12 --managed-python lixity
uv tool update-shell

Open a new terminal, verify lixity --version, then start the local workspace with lixity service start --open. Choose Open Project or Analyze a manuscript; the first-project guide explains both. For later visits, use the packaged lixity-start.sh / lixity-start.ps1 launcher or the same service command.

The installation guide covers platform setup, pinned release wheels with SHA256SUMS, service status and logs, updates and removal. After an upgrade, restart the workspace to load the installed version.

What you can do

Understand your writing

See how sentence lengths, vocabulary, dialogue and tense vary throughout your manuscript. Open the passages behind a result before deciding whether to revise. Short or empty texts cannot support every comparison; unavailable results are shown explicitly.

Read the language signals · Mobile view · Dark theme

Compare chapters in context

The chapter map uses your manuscript's chapters as its reference. For example, a chapter with longer sentences than usual may reflect a new voice or a formal report. Select a coloured cell to inspect that chapter. The style axes bring together related measurements, helping you see which chapters share patterns and which features distinguish them.

Understand chapter comparisons · Style dimensions · Reference bands

Assign scenes to registers—such as dialogue, action or a formal report—so you can compare scenes with a similar purpose. Each group has its own middle values (medians); you can also set optional targets. Small samples may leave measurements unavailable. Scene example · Setup and limits.

Print what the analysis found

Export an A5 reading copy, A4 analysis report or A4 submission sheet from PDF export in the project controls, or use lixity pdf. The composer uses your project's title, author and optional publication details. Empty fields supply no inferred information.

See the complete Effi Briest report or Pride and Prejudice report. PDF layouts and font limits · Publication settings.

Keep review notes beside the text

Start from the flagged passages list, open a paragraph and read its measured values, source lines and tense labels. A note can be written directly on the passage; work markers keep it next to the relevant text in Markdown. Their visibility in a book export depends on the editor or converter you use.

Work-marker instructions · Flagged passages · Note on a passage · Paragraph view

Connect sources, claims and decisions

The experimental research workspace keeps selected sources, quotations and notes in a separate local archive. A dossier gathers notes on a topic; a claim records an assertion you can link to source passages; a decision explains what you chose for the book. Filter by title or tag, or search the saved text. A saved quotation records what a source says; its accuracy still needs review.

Import authorized local files or selected Zotero Desktop attachments. Scans can use local Tesseract or a configured OCR worker; inspect extraction warnings and quotations. Evidence links pin source paragraphs, while manuscript quote associations connect reviewed prose to exact claim revisions.

Review identifies older linked versions and changed manuscript anchors for your assessment. Related revisions can be previewed and saved together; conflicts preserve your draft. Nothing is repinned silently. Add local images as visual references, or use Timeline to organize claims with explicit calendar periods. These links and views record your interpretation; they do not establish factual truth. Research workflows and limits.

Research guide · Search and citations · Sources · Claims · Decisions · Decision review · Related revision preview

Choose a project and its settings

Preview a manuscript before importing it, select its analysis language and adjust which differences you want to examine. Project settings also hold the author name, publication details and optional confidentiality-agreement controls.

Project workflow · Import preview · Mobile settings

Read a report in the terminal

Use lixity analyze manuscript.md --language de for a readable report, or add --json for software integration. Chapter, paragraph, dialogue, pacing and research commands are covered in the command reference.

These screenshots use public-domain literature or synthetic project records. More views and capture details.

How to read the results

Each measurement answers a specific question about the text:

Chapter comparisons use the manuscript's middle values and typical spread (median and MAD), with an adjustment for estimated sampling noise. Colours mark the direction of a difference, not its literary value. Optional statistical checks mark a selection for review; they cannot certify that a passage needs editing. An unavailable value can mean there is too little text or too few comparable chapters to calculate it.

The mathematical core includes several vocabulary measures (HD-D, MTLD, MATTR, Guiraud R, Maas a² and Yule's K). They answer related questions using different models and sample sizes. Readability and grammatical-pattern indicators have language-specific limits. Formulas, citations and worked examples live in Methods. The interpretation guide explains how to read results; stability and validation limits describe what has and has not been established.

Supported languages

German (de) and English (en) have the most extensive linguistic resources and language-specific fixtures. French (fr), Spanish (es), Italian (it), Portuguese (pt) and Dutch (nl) also have localized interfaces and analysis resources, with narrower heuristic coverage and validation.

Choose the manuscript language explicitly. LIXITY_LANG=de selects German terminal messages independently of --language de, which selects German analysis. Documentation is English; source quotations retain their original language. Mathematical identifiers and numeric JSON values are language-neutral. Language support and limits.

Documentation map

• Practical guides — installation, interpretation, research and comparisons with other tools.
• First project · Installation and updates.
• CLI workflows — use lixity --help and lixity COMMAND --help for the installed commands and options.
• Automation contracts · Research workflows.
• Methods · Stability · Architecture · Localization.
• Agent index · Full documentation bundle.

Current release

The current release is v0.5.0, continuing the pre-1.0 development line; historical v3.0.1 and earlier notes and tags remain available. Public JSON and research storage schema versions are independent; this release reads research archives through v7. When upgrading from the historical numbering, install the pinned release wheel explicitly; PyPI upgrades continue normally afterwards. Release notes describe compatibility and known limits; the changelog records subsequent work on main.

Python API and automation

from lixity import api

html = api.dashboard(text, language="de", project_config={})

CLI, Python and dashboard analysis share one pipeline. Analysis/profile JSON uses schema v2; style JSON uses v4. Integrations should pass explicit project settings when working with several projects.

Choose api.analyze for numeric results or api.fingerprint for a style reference. Each convenience call performs its own analysis; integrations needing several outputs can reuse the shared analysis result.

Interface contracts · Architecture · Research commands · Automation summary

Research

The methods and the tool's placement among stylometry and corpus tools are described in the software paper draft under paper/, prepared for the Journal of Open Source Software. Released versions are archived on Zenodo: cite the concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23390297 (see CITATION.cff); every release also receives its own version DOI.

License

Lixity is open source under the AGPL-3.0-or-later. Use it freely for private and commercial writing, research and teaching — including self-publishing your book; no extra permission is needed. If you distribute Lixity or a modified version, the AGPL requires that recipients receive the corresponding source under the same license.

A separate written commercial license is available for integrations that cannot meet the AGPL, for example embedding Lixity in a closed-source product or running a modified version as a network service without releasing its source.

Licensing guide · Full AGPL text · Former LNCL-1.0 text · Commercial enquiries

Maintainer: Matthias Fahsold, Hamburg, Germany. Project operator: ROST Services GmbH, Rümpel, Germany. Legal notice.

Contributing · Report a security concern · Sample-text provenance