Vocet (dictation-app)

Hold a hotkey, speak, release, and the text is pasted into the app that has focus.

Status: alpha, first release for testers (0.1.0). macOS 13 or newer on Apple Silicon only (the DMG is aarch64; no Intel build). Speech is transcribed on your Mac with a downloaded model, or in the cloud with your own Groq or OpenAI API key. Windows is planned.

Recorded in a macOS VM: a real Right Option hold, speech by macOS say fed to the app as audio, transcribed by Groq Whisper.

Try it

1. Download the DMG from the latest GitHub release.
2. Follow the tester guide: install, first run, speech (an on-device model or your own key), first dictation, updates and how to report a bug.

You need an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) with macOS 13 or newer. Releases are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, so the first launch needs no extra step. What is in each release, and its known limits, is in the changelog. Anonymous usage and error events are on by default and can be turned off in Settings; see what is sent.

How it was built

This is a learning project built by a small team of AI agents: a Lead who writes the milestone specs, and a Developer, a Tester and a Code Reviewer who each work in their own sandbox, on two model families so the reviewer is independent of the author. Every change goes through a pull request. The rules the agents follow are in AGENTS.md.

I write about what I learn building it on LinkedIn.

Built with Tauri 2, Rust and React/TypeScript.

Development prerequisites

Building the app needs a Mac with macOS 13 or newer. Building on other systems is not supported yet (see the Tauri prerequisites if you want to try).

Build it on a Mac

In order, on a clean Mac:

# 1. Apple's command line tools (compiler, git)
xcode-select --install

# 2. Homebrew (https://brew.sh), then put it on your PATH (Apple Silicon)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

# 3. Rust. rustup then installs the exact toolchain from rust-toolchain.toml
#    the first time you build.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# 4. Node 24 (see .nvmrc); nvm or fnm work too.
brew install node@24
echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/node@24/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

# 5. The tools the quality gate and git hooks use. CI pins exact versions;
#    brew installs the latest, which is fine for local work.
brew install lefthook cargo-deny cargo-nextest cargo-llvm-cov typos-cli jq
cargo install cargo-machete --version 0.9.2 --locked
cargo install cargo-about --version 0.9.3 --locked --features cli

# 6. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/gargankit90/dictation-app.git
cd dictation-app
npm ci
scripts/install-hooks.sh   # once per clone: git hooks, incl. the push guard
scripts/make-dev-cert.sh   # once per Mac: "dictation-app Dev" signing certificate

# 7. Run it
npm run tauri dev

Open a new terminal after step 4 so brew, cargo and node are on your PATH (node@24 is keg-only in Homebrew, hence its PATH line). The gate tools in step 5 are only needed to push (the pre-push hook runs the gate) and for scripts/gate.sh; npm run tauri dev does not need them.

To build the signed .app, run npm run tauri build -- --debug --bundles app. Builds are signed with the self-signed dictation-app Dev certificate so macOS keeps the Accessibility and Microphone permissions across rebuilds. Without it, tauri build stops with "The specified item could not be found in the keychain". To build the tester DMG, run scripts/build-dmg.sh; CI builds an ad-hoc-signed one as an artifact (.github/workflows/dmg.yml).

Quality gate

Every change runs the same gate (scripts/gate.sh): git's pre-push hook runs it through lefthook run pre-push-gate, and CI runs it on GitHub-hosted runners for every pull request and on pushes to main. The VM end-to-end tests (tests/e2e/) are not part of CI; the maintainer runs them locally, inside a VM on their own Mac, after each merge. Run the gate yourself with:

scripts/gate.sh          # skips itself if this exact input already passed; prose-only changes run fewer checks
scripts/gate.sh --full   # everything, always (CI does this)

Check	Command
Format	cargo fmt --all --check, npx prettier --check .
Rust lint	cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
Dependencies	cargo deny check, cargo machete
Rust tests	cargo nextest run --workspace, cargo test --workspace --doc
Coverage	scripts/coverage.sh (core, transcribe ≥ 85%, app ≥ 70%)
TypeScript	npx tsc -b --noEmit, npx eslint . --max-warnings 0, npx vitest run
Licence notice	scripts/check-licences.sh (THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt is current; regenerate with scripts/gen-licences.sh THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt)
Spelling	typos
Guards	scripts/test-guards.sh

pre-commit (lefthook) runs the fast checks on staged files: cargo fmt --check, prettier --check, eslint, typos.

Layout

Path	What it holds
crates/core	Pure logic: coordinator state machine, text, audio maths, settings. No I/O.
crates/ports	Traits only: the boundaries to the OS and the network.
crates/platform	OS adapters (hotkey, audio, paste, permissions, secrets) and test fakes.
crates/transcribe	Speech-to-text engines behind one trait.
crates/app	Runs the coordinator against the ports (package dictation-pipeline). No Tauri types.
src-tauri	Thin Tauri shell: commands, events, tray, windows.
src	React UI.
scripts/	The quality gate, git hooks, release and DMG scripts, VM helpers.
tests/e2e/	The VM end-to-end suite. Run by the maintainer, see its README.
third_party/	Patched forks of handy-keys and coreaudio-rs; each has a PATCHES.md saying what changed and why.
docs/	Engineering notes (ENGINEERING.md), the tester guide, release notes, agent role files.
docs/history/	The agents' paper trail: every milestone spec, Tester run and Code Review round. Start with its README.

Contributing and security

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Report vulnerabilities privately, as described in SECURITY.md.

Licence

MIT, see LICENSE. Third-party code and its licences are listed in NOTICE and THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt.