Show a translucent, click-through bubble the moment recording starts (by
hotkey or wakeword): a pulsing microphone, a live waveform of the mic
level, and the recognised text (word-by-word when streaming, otherwise a
brief final-result confirmation). The tail points at the text caret via
AT-SPI accessibility, falling back to the mouse pointer, then a screen
corner. Also gives hands-free wakeword sessions visible feedback, whose
notifications are suppressed by design. X11 only.
- overlay.py: GTK override-redirect HUD (mic + waveform + bubble), drawn
with Cairo; thread-safe, marshalled onto the GTK loop.
- caret.py: best-effort anchor (AT-SPI caret -> pointer -> window/corner).
- daemon: optional level_cb/text_cb hooks; reuses the VAD level meter for
non-streaming, a dedicated meter for streaming. Stays UI-agnostic.
- gtkui: instantiate the overlay, drive show/update/hide from status.
- General settings: "Visual overlay" toggle; config overlay_enabled /
overlay_anchor (default on, "caret").
- Docs: CHANGELOG 1.5.0, version bump, README + MANUAL.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Spoken presets: route() now also matches a preset's name as an implicit
keyword, so presets with no configured keywords (Nicer email, Calm down,
Add emojis) are triggerable by voice — say the name. Explicit keywords still
win; names are added to STT hotwords too. Tests added.
- General tab: switches moved to the far right of each row with an inline
grey description (new _switch_row helper) so each toggle is self-explanatory.
- About tab: add "Copyright: 2026 mARTin Bierschenk - Design".
- MANUAL + CHANGELOG updated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The matched-preset feedback used _dnotify, which is suppressed for hands-free
sessions — so wakeword users never saw which keyword/preset fired.
- Add a dedicated "Announce matched preset" notification (_rnotify), gated by
a new [general] notify_routing flag (default on) and independent of the
hands-free silence, so it shows for wakeword commands too. It only fires on a
real routing match, so it never spams when nothing is said.
- Show each preset's emoji in that notification; add a per-preset "Icon (emoji)"
field to the Presets editor so matches are visually distinct.
- General-tab toggle; MANUAL + CHANGELOG updated. Adds a test that the match is
announced even when _session_silent is set.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
When no [routing] default is configured, default_preset fell back to
workflows[0]. If that was an LLM rewrite (e.g. "Improve text"), every
wakeword/voice command without a matching keyword was sent to the language
model — repeatedly failing with HTTP 502 when the LLM backend was down.
default_preset now prefers a transcribe-mode preset for the no-keyword
fallback, so the default action is plain transcription. Adds tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reported issues from hands-free use:
- Wakeword WAVs didn't play: the new "Play audio cues" master switch
([sounds] enabled) also gated the hands-free Sound: detected/captured cues,
so enabled=false silenced them. The cues live in a separate UI section, so
this was surprising. Wakeword cues are now independent of that switch: they
play whenever a file is set, and an empty field means silent (no system-chime
fallback) — which is also how you turn a hands-free cue off. The master switch
now governs only the manual (keyboard) before/after chimes.
- Clarified the four sound fields' tooltips/labels (detected/captured = hands-free
only; before/after = manual only) and the empty-field behaviour.
- New "Silence to stop (s)" setting (Settings → Input → Hands-free, or
[wakeword] silence_seconds, default 2.0): user-defined trailing-silence
timeout for hands-free auto-stop (was hard-coded to 2.5 s).
- Add MANUAL.md documenting every setting in every tab; link it from the README.
Tests: cue independence + manual-gating + roundtrip (17 passed).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two follow-ups from hands-free testing:
- Audio cues had no off-switch: empty sound fields fall back to the freedesktop
system chime, so wakeword/recording always made noise. Add a [sounds] enabled
master flag (default true) exposed as "Play audio cues" in Settings → Input.
When off, _play_cue/_play_sound are no-ops — fully silent operation.
- The VAD level meter (sounddevice/PortAudio) leaked harmless thread-teardown
errors ("pthread_join ... failed", "PaUnixThread_Terminate ... failed") to the
terminal on every clip end. PortAudio writes these straight to fd 2, so wrap
the stream open/close in a fd-level stderr suppressor (_quiet_c_stderr).
Tests: cue gating respects the master switch (16 passed).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two optional WAVs in the Hands-free section: "Sound: detected" plays when the
wakeword fires (your cue to speak now) and "Sound: captured" plays when the
command is taken (silence/stop). For hands-free sessions these take precedence
over the general [sounds] cues, falling back to them and then to the built-in
system sound. The general cues are relabelled "Audio cues (manual dictation)".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
New sound.py plays a user WAV (or a built-in system sound) without blocking.
Config gains [sounds] before/after paths. The daemon plays the "before" cue when
recording starts and the "after" cue on every stop (stop+paste, stop+paste+Enter,
or auto-stop on silence — all funnel through finish_dictation). Input tab gets an
Audio cues section: file pickers with play-test and clear-to-default buttons.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Wayland support: text delivery using wtype or ydotool (paste.py)
- Testing: added Pytest coverage for routing, quality, and config logic
- CI/CD: added test-linux job to .github/workflows/ci.yml
- Feature: Hands-free dictation using an external wyoming-openwakeword
server, respecting the /tmp/wake_muted toggle.
- Local-Whisper Device + Compute type now live under the STT engine section
("Local engine — device & precision"), removed from the General tab. The
local engine's Model field shows the effective whisper size.
- LLM engines gain a Type field (local | cloud), mirroring STT, stored in config.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
New GTK settings with a dropdown+editor pattern across four tabs:
- Presets: select/add/delete prompt presets; edit name, keywords, hotkey, mode,
per-preset model/temperature, and a clearly-bordered prompt textfield.
- Engines: STT and LLM engine managers with green/red online-offline status
dots, add/edit/delete, active selector, and an STT record-and-benchmark Test.
- Input: input scheme + keys + quality-gate settings.
- General: microphone picker with a live sounddevice level meter, output,
language, notifications, launch-on-login toggle, and local-Whisper settings.
Adds audio.py (mic enumeration via pactl + LevelMeter) and autostart.py
(~/.config/autostart entry). Recorder + daemon honour the selected mic.
Requirements gain sounddevice + tomli-w.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
New quality.py: analyze the recorded WAV (duration + RMS, stdlib only) and drop
clips that are too short or too quiet before transcribing; after transcribing,
reject the stock phrases Whisper invents on silence ("Thank you.", "Untertitel
…", "Vielen Dank." etc.) on short clips. New [quality] config section
(min_speech_seconds, silence_rms, reject_hallucinations, strip_trailing_punctuation).
Tested: silence rms 38 rejected, speech rms 4656 passes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
New inputmode.py: Ctrl+Win start, Ctrl stop+paste, Alt stop+paste+Enter, Esc
cancel; toggle and push-to-talk variants. Low-level pynput Listener with arming
so stop/send/cancel only fire while recording and only after the start chord is
released — a stray Ctrl tap while idle does nothing (unit-tested).
Daemon split into start/finish/cancel_dictation (+ send_enter -> press Enter),
with start_input/stop_input dispatching between "modifiers" and "hotkeys" modes.
New [input] config section; paste.press_enter for auto-send. Default mode is
"modifiers"; voice-keyword routing still applies to what you say.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- stt.py: local + remote (OpenAI-compatible) transcription, TCP reachability
status, benchmark. Tested live against faster-whisper-server :8010.
- llm.py: LLM engine presets (url/model/key/temperature) + chat + status.
Tested live against local Qwen :19001 and llama-swap :28080.
- config: [stt]/[[stt_engine]] and [llm]/[[llm_engine]] presets with active
selectors; defaults synthesized from legacy [whisper]/[rewrite].
- daemon: transcribe via active STT engine, rewrite via active LLM engine;
load local Whisper only when the active STT engine is local.
- Rename package entry __main__.py -> blitztext.py (thin __main__ shim keeps
`python -m blitztext` working). Remove rewrite.py (folded into llm.py).
- App icon extracted from the macOS AppIcon.icns; installed at several hicolor
sizes by the .deb and used as the window icon. Drop placeholder SVG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
One hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+Space) records; the spoken keyword at the start or end of
speech selects the preset, which is then stripped and the rest applied. New
routing.py does ASR-tolerant matching (normalize + fuzzy + edge-window scan +
token-drift slack); config gains a [routing] section and per-preset `keywords`;
the daemon adds a "route" mode and biases Whisper with the keywords as hotwords.
Falls back to a default preset when no keyword is recognised.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The upstream app is macOS-only (Swift/SwiftUI, CoreML/WhisperKit) and can't
run on Linux or in a container. This adds a native host tool under linux/ that
reproduces the workflow: focus any text field, press a hotkey, speak, and the
optionally-rewritten text is typed into that field.
- Engine: pynput global hotkeys → mic record → local faster-whisper →
optional OpenAI-compatible rewrite → xdotool typing into the focused window
- Frontends: system tray (AppIndicator, default), tkinter control panel,
and headless modes
- Config-driven workflows in ~/.config/blitztext/config.toml with per-workflow
prompt/model/temperature overrides
- Packaging: install.sh, requirements.txt, systemd user unit
- Targets X11; local transcription runs CPU int8 on this arm64 host
See linux/CHANGELOG.md and linux/README.md for details.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
