R3write

Inline AI rewrite for Windows.
Select text in any app. Press Ctrl + Alt + G. Pick an action. Paste the result back.
Local-by-default with free Ollama, multi-provider for speed — Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, OpenRouter, Ollama Cloud.

Website →  ·  Download  ·  Buy activation key  ·  Release notes  ·  Changelog

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Select text in Word, the popup streams an Improve rewrite, you Accept & paste — every keystroke without leaving the source app.

Why R3write

• Inline, not a tab. No window-switching. The rewrite happens where you're already typing.
• Free by default. Local Ollama is the zero-cost path — no key, no quota, no network. Cloud providers are opt-in for speed or quality.
• Bring your own key. Every cloud provider uses your own API key, stored per-provider in Windows Credential Manager — never on disk in plain text, never proxied through anyone else's server.
• Word-level diff. See exactly what changed, every time. Green additions, red deletions, on the same surface where you accepted the rewrite.

Quick install

R3write is free to install and pay-what-you-want to unlock.

1. Download R3write → from GitHub and run the installer.
2. Buy a license key → at the Lemon Squeezy checkout (pay what you want, $5 minimum). The receipt email includes your key.
3. Paste the key on first launch to activate. Without a key the app stays locked on the activation screen; with one it unlocks the main window and the quick-edit popup permanently on that machine. The activation gate itself has a Buy a key button if you skipped step 2.

See the release page for release notes and changelog.

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/drknowhow/R3write
cd R3write
npm install
npm run tauri:dev

Prerequisites: Windows 10/11 · Node ≥ 20 · Rust stable + MSVC Build Tools · WebView2 (preinstalled on recent Windows).

On first launch a four-step onboarding shows you where to set up a provider. Default is Ollama Cloud (free tier); switch to Local Ollama for zero-cost local inference or any of the other five cloud providers from Settings → Model → Provider.

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What's in it

One hotkey, any app

Word, Slack, browsers, code editors, terminals — anywhere there's text. The popup opens at your cursor with Improve / Fix grammar / Shorten / Expand / Tone / Prompt / Custom. Each chip has a numeric shortcut (1-4, C) so you never need the mouse. Pick one and the rewrite streams in.

Repeat the same action on a new selection with Ctrl + Alt + Shift + G — no picker, no clicks.

Word-level diff

Toggle the rewrite into Diff view to see exactly what changed: green for additions, red strike-through for deletions, with a running +N -M words tally and the first-token latency. Sanitised for both light and dark themes.

Your providers, your keys

Provider	Tier	Default model	Notes
Local Ollama	Free	llama3.2	runs on your machine, no key
Ollama Cloud	Free tier · BYO key	gemma4:31b-cloud	default for new installs
Google Gemini	Free tier · BYO key	gemini-2.5-flash	most generous free tier; very fast
Groq	Free tier · BYO key	llama-3.3-70b-versatile	fastest streaming token rate
OpenRouter	Free tier · BYO key	anthropic/claude-sonnet-4	aggregator, many models
OpenAI	BYO key	gpt-4.1-mini	paid only
Anthropic	BYO key	claude-sonnet-4-6	paid only

Each provider has its own keyring entry in Windows Credential Manager. Switch providers and the others' keys stay put. A live status pill in the header polls the active provider every 60 s — green/amber/red.

History at a glance

Last 20 rewrites with action, time, word-level diff, and one-click Revert (copies the original back to your clipboard for paste-over-the-rewrite). Closing the main window keeps R3write running in the system tray so the global hotkey still fires.

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Power features

• Saved templates — name your common custom prompts in Settings → Templates; they surface as a popup dropdown next to Tone / Prompt / Custom.
• Recent custom prompts — last 12 surface as one-click chips beneath the custom-prompt input.
• Glossary & protected terms — Settings → Glossary appends a persistent style guide to every system prompt and locks listed terms (names, identifiers, brand strings) so the model preserves them verbatim.
• Paste-as toggle — Plain strips Markdown for clean prose; MD preserves Markdown for Slack, Discord, code editors. Choice persists.
• Three Prompt actions for rewriting LLM/agent prompts — Compress tokens / Distill intent / Structure for agents. None invent new requirements.
• Multi-turn refinement — follow up with "more concise", "less formal", etc. Context is capped to system + first turn + last assistant + new user so cycles don't compound token cost.
• Educational + Affirmation channels (optional) — the model adds a "Why this works" note or a one-line encouragement, in a side-card. Excluded from paste-back and history.
• Customisable hotkeys — rebind both the main hotkey and every in-popup shortcut.
• Autostart at login — toggle in Settings → Advanced (writes the Windows per-user Run registry key).
• Export history as JSON or Markdown from Settings → Advanced.
• System / light / dark theme with manual override, pre-hydration boot script (no flash), View Transitions API crossfade where supported.
• First-run onboarding — four-step walkthrough and one-click jump to Settings.

How it works under the hood

R3write is a two-window Tauri 2 app:

• Main window — history list, status pill, settings, system tray host.
• Quick-edit popup — frameless alwaysOnTop window, pre-mounted, shown at cursor.

The hotkey handler in Rust shows the popup immediately with a Capturing… placeholder, then runs the clipboard dance in a background thread (release modifiers, write sentinel, simulate Ctrl+C, poll for clipboard change, restore original). The captured text streams to the popup; the popup makes a single streaming request to the active provider via tauri-plugin-http and writes tokens directly to the DOM via requestAnimationFrame (so React re-renders stay at ~3 per response).

Each window loads its own HTML and JS entry (index.html + quick-edit.html) so the popup ships only what it needs — cold-start parse cost stays small even as the main window grows new tabs.

Stack

• Tauri 2 (Rust) — Windows shell, NSIS installer
• React 18 + TypeScript + Vite + Tailwind v4 — frontend
• Multi-page Vite build — separate entries per window
• Radix UI + Framer Motion + Lucide React — accessible primitives, animations, icons
• marked + DOMPurify + diff — Markdown rendering and inline diff
• enigo — keyboard simulation for Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V capture and paste-back
• keyring (windows-native) — per-provider API key storage

Configuration

Settings persist in localStorage under r3write.settings.v1; API keys live in Windows Credential Manager (service: R3write, account: r3write-api-key-<provider> or the legacy ollama-api-key for Ollama Cloud). The full schema lives in DEFAULT_SETTINGS in src/main.tsx; the most user-facing fields:

Field	Default	Notes
provider	ollama-cloud	Any of the seven providers; legacy cloud / local migrate on first load.
model	provider-dependent	Any model name your provider serves.
hotkey	Ctrl+Alt+G	Repeat-last uses the same combo + Shift.
viewMode	rendered	rendered or diff — persisted.
pasteFormat	plain	plain strips Markdown on Accept; markdown keeps it.
savedTemplates	[]	Named custom prompts shown in the popup.
styleGuide	""	Appended to every system prompt.
protectedTerms	""	Comma- or newline-separated; preserved verbatim.
clickOutsideDismiss	true	Closes the popup on window-blur (drag-safe).
autostart	false	Mirrors the Windows per-user Run registry value.

Theme preference is stored under r3write.theme.v1 and applied pre-hydration; history under r3write.history.v1 (last 20 entries).

Build a release installer

npm run tauri:build

NSIS installer lands in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/nsis/R3write_<version>_x64-setup.exe. Code signing isn't wired up — Windows SmartScreen will warn on install until the build is signed (Azure Trusted Signing is the recommended modern path).

For a full release cut (version bump in all three manifests, CHANGELOG promote, build, tag, push, and GitHub release with notes), use the helper. The installer is distributed via Lemon Squeezy — upload it there after each build.

scripts/release.sh 1.4.0

Run it from anywhere inside the repo. It refuses to proceed unless you're on main, the working tree is clean, you're in sync with origin, the tag doesn't already exist, and the [Unreleased] section in CHANGELOG.md has content (which becomes the release notes verbatim).

Layout

R3write/
├── README.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── docs/
│   ├── icon.png
│   └── screenshots/             # the shots used above
├── index.html                   # main window — pre-hydration theme boot
├── quick-edit.html              # popup window — pre-hydration theme boot
├── vite.config.ts               # multi-page input (main + quick-edit)
├── src/
│   ├── entry-main.tsx           # renders <App />
│   ├── entry-quick-edit.tsx     # renders <QuickEdit />
│   ├── main.tsx                 # App, QuickEdit, provider clients, dialogs
│   ├── theme.ts                 # useTheme() hook, View Transitions crossfade
│   └── index.css                # Tailwind + design tokens + prose styles
└── src-tauri/
    ├── Cargo.toml
    ├── tauri.conf.json          # two windows: main + quick-edit
    ├── capabilities/default.json
    └── src/main.rs              # hotkeys + capture + paste-back + autostart + keyring

About

R3write started as a personal itch: every time I needed to clean up a paragraph, tighten a Slack message, or rewrite a sentence I'd just typed, I'd Alt+Tab into a chatbot, paste the text, copy the response back, switch back, and lose my train of thought. For the small rewrites I do constantly, a 30-second chat is overkill.

R3write replaces the tab switch with a hotkey. Select text in any app, press Ctrl+Alt+G, pick an action, paste back. The rewrite happens where you're already typing.

Principles

• Local by default. The free path uses Ollama on your machine. No network, no key, no quota.
• Bring your own key. Every cloud provider uses your API key directly. R3write doesn't proxy anything through its own server. There is no R3write server.
• No telemetry. R3write doesn't phone home, doesn't track usage, doesn't collect analytics.
• Your data stays where you put it. Selections go to the provider you configured. That's it.

Built by

@drknowhow. Issues, ideas, and PRs welcome on GitHub.

Supporters

R3write is free during beta thanks to people who tip and sponsor it. Sponsorship is what keeps the app free while it's finding its shape; it directly funds the next features on the roadmap (caret-anchored popup positioning, per-action model overrides, A/B regenerate, recipe chaining, eventual macOS support).

 

Become the first listed sponsor — your name (and avatar, if you'd like) goes here.

Known limitations

• Quick-edit relies on the OS handing focus back to the previous app ~90 ms after the popup hides. Most apps cope; some Electron apps with custom focus handling may not.
• No single-instance lock or auto-updater yet (autostart is shipped).
• Code signing isn't configured; Windows SmartScreen will warn on install.
• Popup is anchored to the mouse, not the text caret — keyboard-only users may see it land somewhere unrelated. Caret-anchored positioning is tracked for a future release.

Changelog

Full history in CHANGELOG.md. Latest: 1.3.0 — Google Gemini provider and the provider tier taxonomy.

License

R3write is in beta — see LICENSE for the full terms.

Source is published on GitHub for transparency and contribution; it is not released under an open-source license at this time. R3write uses a pay-what-you-want model ($5 minimum) per major version; once a version is purchased it remains yours.