Grammarly Multi-Environment Setup

Overview

Grammarly integration requires environment separation to isolate API credentials, enforce team-scoped style guides, and manage rate limits per tier. Development uses mock API responses for fast iteration without consuming quota, staging connects to the Grammarly sandbox for real grammar checks with test content, and production runs against the live API with full team configurations. Each environment has its own client credentials and style guide settings to prevent dev experiments from affecting production writing standards.

Environment Configuration

const grammarlyConfig = (env: string) => ({
  development: {
    clientId: process.env.GRAMMARLY_DEV_CLIENT_ID!, clientSecret: process.env.GRAMMARLY_DEV_CLIENT_SECRET!,
    baseUrl: "http://localhost:3100/mock-grammarly", useMockApi: true, concurrency: 1, intervalCap: 2,
  },
  staging: {
    clientId: process.env.GRAMMARLY_STG_CLIENT_ID!, clientSecret: process.env.GRAMMARLY_STG_CLIENT_SECRET!,
    baseUrl: "https://api.grammarly.com/sandbox", useMockApi: false, concurrency: 2, intervalCap: 5,
  },
  production: {
    clientId: process.env.GRAMMARLY_PROD_CLIENT_ID!, clientSecret: process.env.GRAMMARLY_PROD_CLIENT_SECRET!,
    baseUrl: "https://api.grammarly.com", teamId: process.env.GRAMMARLY_TEAM_ID!, concurrency: 5, intervalCap: 10,
  },
}[env]);

Environment Files

# Per-env files: .env.development, .env.staging, .env.production
GRAMMARLY_{DEV|STG|PROD}_CLIENT_ID=<client-id>
GRAMMARLY_{DEV|STG|PROD}_CLIENT_SECRET=<secret>
GRAMMARLY_BASE_URL={http://localhost:3100/mock|https://api.grammarly.com/sandbox|https://api.grammarly.com}
GRAMMARLY_TEAM_ID=<team-id>          # staging + production only

Environment Validation

function validateGrammarlyEnv(env: string): void {
  const suffix = { development: "_DEV", staging: "_STG", production: "_PROD" }[env];
  const required = [`GRAMMARLY${suffix}_CLIENT_ID`, `GRAMMARLY${suffix}_CLIENT_SECRET`];
  if (env === "production") required.push("GRAMMARLY_TEAM_ID");
  const missing = required.filter((k) => !process.env[k]);
  if (missing.length) throw new Error(`Missing Grammarly vars for ${env}: ${missing.join(", ")}`);
}

Promotion Workflow

# 1. Verify mock API coverage in dev
npm test -- --grep "grammarly" --env development

# 2. Run style guide checks against Grammarly sandbox
curl -X POST "https://api.grammarly.com/sandbox/check" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAMMARLY_STG_TOKEN" -d @test-content.json

# 3. Compare suggestion quality between staging and baseline
node scripts/grammarly-diff.js --env staging --baseline expected-suggestions.json

# 4. Rotate credentials and deploy to production
GRAMMARLY_PROD_CLIENT_SECRET=$(vault read -field=secret grammarly/prod)
npm run deploy -- --env production

Environment Matrix

Setting	Dev	Staging	Prod
API Endpoint	Mock (localhost)	Grammarly Sandbox	Live API
Team Style Guide	None	Test guide	Production guide
Rate Limit	1 concurrent / 2 per interval	2 / 5	5 / 10
Quota Tracking	Disabled	Enabled	Enabled + alerts
User Scope	Developer only	QA team	All team members

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Fix
401 Unauthorized	Client credentials expired or wrong env	Rotate credentials in Grammarly developer console for target env
Rate limit 429	Concurrency exceeds tier plan	Lower intervalCap or upgrade Grammarly plan
Mock API returns empty	Local mock server not running	Start mock with npm run mock:grammarly before dev tests
Style guide mismatch	Team ID points to wrong guide	Verify GRAMMARLY_TEAM_ID matches the intended style guide
Suggestions differ across envs	Sandbox uses older model version	Expected behavior; validate core rules only in staging

Prerequisites

• Separate credentials, network destinations, and configuration revisions for sandbox, staging, and production.
• A secret-manager reference per environment, protected promotion approval, synthetic fixtures, and a production rollback revision.

Instructions

1. Validate the selected environment against an explicit allowlist before reading credentials or sending text.
2. Apply versioned, idempotent configuration changes in sandbox and run synthetic retention and behavior probes.
3. Promote to staging only with owner approval, bounded fixtures, and redacted observability compared with baseline.
4. Canary one production integration after protected review; halt and restore the prior revision for a scope, retention, quota, or error regression.
5. Record only environment, configuration revision, aggregate counts, and rollback result in the promotion receipt.

Output

Produce a promotion receipt with environment, configuration revision, synthetic test totals, staging/canary result, owner approval, and rollback reference. Exclude credentials, source text, and identities.

Examples

env=staging; config=r22; fixture=writing-v4; retention=none; behavior=pass; rollback=r21 is evidence for controlled promotion.

Resources

• Grammarly API

Next Steps

See grammarly-deploy-integration.