dikte/README.md

# Dikte

Press `Ctrl+Space`, talk, press again. The recording goes to OpenAI or OpenRouter
for transcription, a model on OpenRouter cleans it up (dropping the *uh*s, the
restarts, the missing punctuation), and the result lands in your clipboard and
is pasted into whatever window you were typing in.

Built for KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland. No dependencies beyond system packages:
just the Python standard library and PyQt6.

*[Türkçe README](README.tr.md)*

<p align="center">
  <img src="docs/settings-general.webp" width="820" alt="Dikte settings, General tab">
</p>

|  |  |
|---|---|
| <img src="docs/settings-api.webp" width="410" alt="API and models"> | <img src="docs/settings-cleanup.webp" width="410" alt="Cleanup rules"> |
| <img src="docs/settings-audio-file.webp" width="410" alt="Audio file"> | <img src="docs/settings-history.webp" width="410" alt="History"> |

## Install

```sh
sudo pacman -S --needed pipewire-audio wl-clipboard ydotool ffmpeg python-pyqt6
systemctl --user enable --now ydotool     # needed for auto-paste

./install.sh                 # or:  ./install.sh "Ctrl+Alt+Space"
dikte                        # the settings window opens on first run
```

On Ubuntu/GNOME X11, recording uses PulseAudio and clipboard/paste use the X11
tools instead:

```sh
sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils xclip xdotool ffmpeg
```

`install.sh` adds the `dikte` command, a menu entry and an autostart entry. The
settings window installs a GNOME or KDE global shortcut.

Two keys go in the settings window: **OpenAI** and **OpenRouter**. Speech to text
runs on either one (`gpt-4o-transcribe` by default), cleanup always on
OpenRouter (`google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite`), so a single OpenRouter key can
cover both. They fall back to `OPENAI_API_KEY` and `OPENROUTER_API_KEY`, and are
stored in `~/.config/dikte/config.json`, mode 600. Cleanup can be switched off,
in which case the raw transcript is pasted, and a thinking model's effort can be
set next to it.

## Using it

| What | How |
| --- | --- |
| Start / stop recording | `Ctrl+Space`, or click the tray icon |
| Cancel a recording | Tray menu → *Cancel recording*, or `dikte cancel` |
| Speak a command to an agent | Tray menu → *Ask Claude*, or `dikte ask` |
| Start / end a meeting | Tray menu → *Record a meeting*, or `dikte meeting` |
| Settings | Tray menu → *Settings*, or `dikte settings` |
| Reload after an update | Tray menu → *Restart*, or `dikte restart` |
| Quit | Tray menu → *Quit*, or `dikte quit` |

An indicator in the screen corner shows a red dot, a live waveform and the
elapsed time, then the stage it is on. It never takes focus. Pressing
`Ctrl+Space` again while Dikte is still working does nothing; nothing queues up.
A dictation and a command to the agent do wait on each other for the microphone,
which is one device, but for nothing else: each has its own indicator, and the
second one stacks above the first while both are up.

Everything the settings window holds has a verb of its own too, so a script or
an agent can work the whole thing: `dikte record --seconds 8` says back what was
said, `dikte transcribe talk.mp4 --srt` writes subtitles, and the settings, the
history and the meetings are there beside them. `dikte --help` lists them, they
all take `--json`, and only the ones needing the microphone need the application
running.

## What it does

- **Silence never reaches the API.** Handed near-silence, a transcription model
  invents a sentence instead of returning nothing ("Thanks for watching", or in
  Turkish "Altyazı M.K."). A recording is dropped when nothing rose 10 dB above
  *that recording's own* noise floor for at least 0.3 s, which is also what
  removes steady fan noise however loud, or when its loud end sits below
  -55 dBFS. The indicator reports the level it measured, which is what you
  calibrate the threshold against.
- **Misheard words are repaired.** Speech models fail phonetically on proper
  nouns, so the cleanup model is asked to fix those from context, and to leave
  the word alone when the context does not make the intended one clear. The names
  you list under Cleanup rules go to the transcription model as a hint and to the
  cleanup model as a glossary, which is what lets it recognise "kuber netis":

  ```
  raw    ıı bugün şey kuber netis üzerinde çalışan servisleri güncelledim
         yani sonra grafanada bir panel açtım hani ve pay kut ile arayüzü
         şey bitirdim işte

  result Bugün Kubernetes üzerinde çalışan servisleri güncelledim. Sonra
         Grafana'da bir panel açtım ve PyQt ile arayüzü bitirdim.
  ```
- **A failed cleanup is never silent.** The raw transcript is still pasted so the
  dictation is not lost, but the indicator turns amber with the reason instead of
  looking like a normal run.
- **A dictation can be a command instead.** Its own shortcut sends the
  transcript to Claude Code (`claude -p`) rather than pasting it, and pastes back
  what comes of it: the answer, or a sentence saying what was done. It is the
  session you would have opened yourself, so your skills and connected services
  are there, which is what makes "put that in my calendar on Thursday at three"
  a thing you can say to a window that is not Claude. Codex (`codex exec`) runs
  the same way, and OpenRouter is there as a plain question-and-answer fallback
  for a machine with neither CLI on it. Provider, model, permissions and working
  directory are under Settings → Agent, and commands close together stay in one
  conversation.
- **Meetings** are recorded from the microphone and the speaker output at the
  same time, which settles who said what by the channel a voice arrived on
  instead of guessing at it. The two sides are transcribed separately and
  interleaved into one timestamped transcript, and a second model, configured
  under Settings → Meeting along with its own instruction, turns that into
  minutes: decisions, action items, open questions. They land in
  `~/.local/share/dikte/meetings` and in Settings → Minutes. A run that fails
  keeps its recording, and a retry resumes from the transcript it already paid
  for.
- **Audio and video files** run through the same models under Settings → Audio
  file, optionally with `[mm:ss]` timestamps, chunked through ffmpeg when long,
  and saved as `.txt` or as `.srt` subtitles; their cleanup follows its own rules,
  written for subtitles, so the lines keep their place and nothing is shortened.
- **History** of every dictation under Settings → History, with a size limit and
  right-click to delete.
- **Turkish and English interface**, following the system locale by default.

## The global shortcut needs one logout

KWin only reads `kglobalshortcutsrc` at startup, so the shortcut `install.sh`
writes will not fire until you log out and back in. Until then, Settings →
Shortcut → **built-in listener** reads `/dev/input` and catches the combination
itself. The difference: it does not swallow the key, so `Ctrl+Space` also reaches
the focused application (some editors will pop up autocomplete). The listener
needs your user in the `input` group: `sudo usermod -aG input $USER`.

## Layout

```
dikte.py          entry point, tray icon, state machine
cli.py            the command line: every verb, and what it answers with
ipc.py            one request and one reply over the local socket
audio.py          PCM capture: pw-record for dictation, ffmpeg for a meeting
meeting.py        channel split, speaker labelling, cleanup, minutes
assistant.py      running a dictation through Claude Code, Codex or OpenRouter
api.py            transcription on either provider, OpenRouter cleanup (stdlib only)
worker.py         transcribe → clean up → clipboard → paste
vad.py            deciding whether a recording holds speech at all
filetranscribe.py file transcription: ffmpeg, chunking, timestamps
overlay.py        the corner indicator
settings_ui.py    settings window
hotkey.py         KDE shortcut installation and the evdev listener
paste.py          wl-clipboard and ydotool wrappers
i18n.py           the string table
```

The indicator is drawn through XWayland, because a Wayland client cannot place a
window in a screen corner; `dikte.py` sets `QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb` for that.

## License

GPL-3.0, see [LICENSE](LICENSE).