why i built it
i dictate half my life into my computer, and superwhisper is lovely — but it’s a subscription for something my mac can do by itself. whisper.cpp runs openai’s whisper models on apple silicon fast enough that dictation feels instant, so i built the two things i actually used: a global hotkey that types what i say, and a meeting recorder that hears both sides of a call.
the meeting recorder was the part i couldn’t find anywhere else without hacks: everything wants you to install blackhole and wrestle audio devices. macos has had a built-in system-audio tap since 14.2 — this uses it directly, so recording a zoom call or a youtube lecture is one click in a little local web page.
it’s a folder of scripts, not an app store product: you’ll run a setup script and grant a few permissions once. the readme walks through all of it. if you can open terminal, you can have free local dictation in about ten minutes.