House Style 0.3.3

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House Style 0.3.3

A small update to 0.3.2.

Changes

• House Style's GitHub project moved from abmorrill4/flare-ai-plugin to
  abmorrill4/house-style. Update checks, Report a Problem and the
  release notes now use the new address. Old links and older versions keep working, because GitHub forwards them.

Install or update

House Style 0.3.0 and later update themselves when you close Flare. For a new install, see
Install House Style.

House Style 0.3.2

Right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before you unzip it.

House Style 0.3.2

A security update to 0.3.1. Install it on every machine that runs House Style.

Changes

• Updates are signed. Each release now has a signature, and House Style installs an update only when that signature
  matches the House Style release key built into the plugin. An update published any other way is refused.
• Style guide requests. House Style applies an approved project exception only for a request this computer sent, with
  the project and rule it sent, and never to a network path. Request files with an unexpected name are ignored.
• Shared Git style guides. When House Style checks whether a team guide in Git is up to date, it no longer runs hooks,
  credential helpers or SSH commands from that guide's Git settings, and it only fetches over HTTPS.

Install or update

House Style 0.3.0 and later update themselves when you close Flare. For a new install, see
Install House Style.

House Style 0.3.1

Right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before you unzip it.

House Style 0.3.1

A small update to 0.3.0.

Changes

• The starter team rules that ship with House Style are now general rules for any software docs team. They cover
  addressing the reader as "you", using the product name variable, "tenant" and "admin panel", and claims such as
  "never fails" or "seamless". The banking rules that were there before came from our test project.
• If your team uses its own style guide folder, your rules are unchanged.
• Help, the user guide and the install page now link to https://gethousestyle.com. Old links still work.

Install or update

House Style 0.3.0 updates itself when you close Flare. For a new install, see
Install House Style.

House Style 0.3.0

Right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before you unzip it.

House Style 0.3.0

This release makes House Style easier to start with. It uses the words Flare and other docs linters use, shows each
writer a shorter ribbon, walks new writers through their first lint, and lets you report a problem or a false positive
without leaving Flare.

Install or upgrade

If you have 0.2.0, House Style updates itself. When you close Flare, 0.3.0 installs, and your next start shows
What's New.

To install by hand:

1. Download HouseStyle-0.3.0.zip and extract all of it.
2. Close Flare.
3. Double-click Install.cmd. Approve the administrator prompt.
4. Start Flare. The installer turns House Style on for you, so the House Style tab is on the ribbon.

Your settings, your rule changes and your decisions on issues are kept.

What you'll notice first

New words

House Style lints a topic and lists its issues. For each issue you choose Change or Ignore, or Disable Rule
to stop the rule. These are the words Flare and other docs linters use, so each button says what it does.

0.2.0	0.3.0
Check style	Lint Topic
Check project	Lint Project
Style rules	Rules
Suggestion	Issue
Apply	Change
Reject	Ignore
Turn off rule	Disable Rule
Apply all fixes	Fix All
Write all as tracked changes	Change All Issues
Rewrite selection	Rewrite
Ask	Ask AI
Topic assists	Topic Metadata
Tune style guide	Rule Decisions
Build style guide	Import Rules
Validate style guide	Test Rules

Each issue is Auto-fix (the rule has an exact fix) or Needs you (an AI rewording to check, or something to fix
in the editor). Lint Project shows the same types for each rule.

A shorter ribbon

Setup now asks How will you use House Style? Writers see Lint Topic, Lint Project, Rules, Rewrite, Ask AI, Topic
Metadata, Settings and Help. Style guide owners also get a Style Guide group with Rule Decisions, Import Rules and
Test Rules. Anyone listed in the team guide's owners.txt gets that group whatever they choose. Export for LLMs and
Diagnostics are now in Settings > Advanced.

A guided first lint

New writers get a four-step setup when Flare starts, then a five-step practice on a sample project or on the topic they
have open. To practice again, select Help > Start the Tour Again. For the first week, the empty issues pane shows a
short Getting started checklist.

Report a Problem and Report False Positive

• Help > Report a Problem… sends your description to the House Style team. Preview shows exactly what is sent.
• When a rule flags text that is fine, right-click the issue and select Report False Positive…. Pick a reason. The
  surrounding sentence is sent only if you check Include the surrounding sentence.
• When House Style hits an error, House Style ran into a problem opens with Send and Don't Send. Check
  Send error reports automatically to send later ones in the background.
• If a report can't be sent, it's saved in Documents\House Style Reports, and Open GitHub Issues lets you
  attach it to a new issue.

Also new

• The issues pane is easy to read at Flare's narrow docked width. Rows wrap instead of being cut off.
• On a team style guide, writers get My Requests. It lists your rule change requests and the owners' answers. You
  can withdraw a request, ask for a wording change, or ask for new rules with Import Rules….
• Fix All (n) makes every Auto-fix change in the topic at once. Change All Issues (n) also makes the AI
  rewording, as tracked changes.
• The installer turns House Style on in Flare for you.
• Error reports are sent only when you choose, or by themselves if you check Send error reports automatically. They
  never include your topic text unless you type it in, and never your key, email address or folder paths.

Privacy

Reports go to a service the House Style authors run, which files them in a private GitHub repository. False-positive
reports are counted per rule. Nothing else changed: linting runs on your computer, and AI features send text only
when you use them.

Known issues

• A change to How will you use House Style? in Settings changes the ribbon the next time you start Flare. Flare
  can't remove ribbon buttons while it runs.
• House Style won't restructure a paragraph that contains a variable, because Flare crashes if that change is redone
  (Ctrl+Y). You see why, and nothing changes.
• House Style won't turn one kind of block into another, for example a list into a table, because Flare can't make
  that change as a tracked change.
• Rewrite… can't restructure a paragraph with pending tracked changes. Accept or reject them first.
• The practice topic isn't part of a project you have open, so Flare shows a note about that.

House Style 0.2.0

Unsigned build: right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before installing.

House Style 0.2.0

This release answers the feedback from the first pilot. It adds a first-run setup, a rule-by-rule view of Check project,
a browser for every style rule, owner approval for changes to a team's guide, and automatic updates.

Install or upgrade

1. Download HouseStyle-0.2.0.zip and extract all of it.
2. Close Flare.
3. Double-click Install.cmd. Approve the administrator prompt. You see it only on the first install of this kind.
4. Start Flare. If House Style isn't enabled, select File > Options > Plugins > House Style > Enable. The tab
   appears right away.

The installer replaces a copy that you installed by hand. Your settings, your rule changes and your review decisions
are kept. From this version on, updates install themselves. See Automatic updates.

First-run setup and Settings

• A new writer's first House Style command opens a three-step setup. If you already have settings from 0.1, open it
  from House Style > Settings > Run setup again.
  1. How will you use AI? No AI (style rules only), your own Anthropic API key, or your company's AI service
     (gateway). Test connection checks the address and key.
  2. Whose style rules? Google's guide plus your own changes, or your team's shared style guide folder.
  3. You're ready. Finishing runs the command that you clicked.
• You can skip any step.
• Settings has four tabs: AI, Style guide, Checking and Advanced.
• The gateway address is cleaned up when you save: spaces and a trailing slash are removed, and http:// becomes
  https://. Connection errors say what to check.
• The key field is called Gateway key for a gateway and API key for Anthropic.

Check project

• Results are grouped by rule, most frequent first. Select a rule to see why it matters, examples and the files it's
  in.
• Fix all applies the rule's fixes in every file. You see the files and counts first. Nothing changes until you
  select Apply. A long run shows its progress, and Stop after this file stops it.
• Review one by one steps through one rule's suggestions.
• Go to opens the file and selects the text. Open file opens the topic or snippet. Right-click a suggestion for
  Go to, Open file and Copy file path.
• By file lists every suggestion file by file. The pane remembers your choice.
• If you undo a fix with Ctrl+Z, or reject it in Flare's Review tab, the suggestion comes back.

Style rules

• Style rules on the ribbon lists every rule from Google, your team's guide, your own changes and the open
  project. Search by any word, and filter by source, state, content and whether a rule has a fix.
• Select a rule to see its wording, examples, level, where it applies, and who changed it, when and why. Rules have
  readable names.
• Turn off…, Change level… and Turn back on work from here. Turning a rule off offers the other rules that
  flag the same words. Turning it back on offers the rules that were turned off with it.
• Turning off a rule now works for every writer, with no administrator rights. Without a team guide, your changes are
  kept in your own settings folder.
• The window remembers its size.

Team style guides

• Keep the team's guide in a shared folder: OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive or a network drive. Source control is
  optional.
• FlareAI/owners.txt in the guide lists the owners. Give owners write access to the folder and other writers read
  access.
• Writers who can't change the guide see Request a change… instead of Turn off rule…. Owners approve or
  decline requests in Tune style guide. The writer sees the answer on their next check.
• An exception for one project goes to the owners too.
• If owners.txt exists but can't be read, every change goes to the owners as a request.
• If the team's guide can't be read, House Style checks with Google's guide and says why.
• House Style's default changes to Google's rules reach team guides too.
• A guide's owners can publish it to Confluence Data Center. See
  Publish the style guide to Confluence.

Build style guide

• Add notes or an old guide… reads Word files (.docx), Word web pages (.htm), .txt and .md.
• Extract rules is the main button in the notes window.
• Edit or remove a suggested rule before you add it.
• A file that's still open in Word no longer causes an error.

AI

• Reviews are reused after you apply fixes, prompts are smaller, and alt text and topic assists don't send the style
  guide. For a typical team, the estimated AI cost is about half of the previous version. See
  AI cost.
• Validate style guide checks only your team's rules with AI. To include Google's rules too, select Include
  Google's rules.
• An AI suggestion that changes must, should or may, or a code term, isn't applied for you. You decide.
• Suggested alt text is 125 characters or fewer.
• With No AI chosen, earlier AI suggestions are hidden, and the pane says "AI review is off".

Automatic updates

• Once a day, House Style asks GitHub whether a new version exists. No document text, key or identifier is sent.
• When there is one, House Style downloads it in the background and checks it against the release's SHA-256 checksum.
  A notice says it installs when you close Flare. It installs with no administrator prompt.
• If the download fails, a short notice says House Style tries again tomorrow.
• If an update can't install, you stay on your current version, and a notice says why.
• After an update, What's new shows the changes. You can open it any time from the ribbon.
• To turn updates off, clear Keep House Style up to date on the Advanced tab of Settings. Your IT department
  can turn them off for everyone with an update-policy.json file. See Privacy.

Other fixes

• House Style writes its own errors to %APPDATA%\FlareAI\diag.log.
• The Plugins list in Flare shows the real version number.
• Export for LLMs keeps block quotes, drops script links, and writes plain summaries in llms.txt.
• Check again asks the AI again, even for paragraphs that haven't changed. Fixes you just applied still don't cost a
  new AI call.
• A restructure can't move a condition onto different text, so the right content still shows in each output.
• House Style no longer rewrites a whole paragraph that contains a variable. That kind of edit made Flare fail on
  Ctrl+Y (redo). Wording-only edits still work.

Known issues

• Rewrite… can't restructure a paragraph that has pending tracked changes. Accept or reject them first.
• The AI can't change one kind of block into another, such as a list into a table. Make that change yourself.
• The review pane opens as narrow as the Content Explorer. Drag its edge to make it wider; Flare remembers the width.

House Style 0.1.3

Unsigned build: right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before installing.

Install: see the README.

House Style 0.1.2

Unsigned build: right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before installing.

Install: see the README.

House Style 0.1.1

Unsigned build: right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before installing.

Install: see the README.

House Style 0.1.0

Unsigned build: right-click the zip > Properties > Unblock before installing.

Install: see the README.