# SLATE: A Super-Lightweight Annotation Tool for Experts

## TL;DR

SLATE is a lightweight, terminal-based annotation tool designed for ease of installation and use, supporting various annotation types and scales, filling a gap left by GUI-based tools.

## Contribution

It introduces a terminal-oriented annotation tool with customizable keybindings and unicode support, optimized for quick setup and diverse annotation tasks.

## Key findings

- Easiest to install and use among compared tools
- Successfully annotated two corpora, including over 250 hours of data
- Supports multiple annotation types and scales

## Abstract

Many annotation tools have been developed, covering a wide variety of tasks and providing features like user management, pre-processing, and automatic labeling. However, all of these tools use Graphical User Interfaces, and often require substantial effort to install and configure. This paper presents a new annotation tool that is designed to fill the niche of a lightweight interface for users with a terminal-based workflow. Slate supports annotation at different scales (spans of characters, tokens, and lines, or a document) and of different types (free text, labels, and links), with easily customisable keybindings, and unicode support. In a user study comparing with other tools it was consistently the easiest to install and use. Slate fills a need not met by existing systems, and has already been used to annotate two corpora, one of which involved over 250 hours of annotation effort.