The dictation pipeline
Microphone
Audio is captured from the input device you picked in Settings → Audio.
Voice activity detection
Silero VAD filters out silence, so pauses while you think do not become gaps
in your text.
Speech to text
A local model (Parakeet, Whisper, Nemotron, or one of the other 65 in the catalog) turns the audio into text, using your GPU or your CPU. See Acceleration.If you pick a cloud speech service instead, the audio is sent to that provider. Nothing else in the pipeline changes.
AI cleanup (optional)
When AI cleanup is on, the transcript is handed to a
language model that removes filler, fixes grammar, and follows spoken edits.
This runs on whichever model you chose for cleanup: the built-in engine (fully
local), your own Ollama or LM Studio server, or a cloud provider.
Text into the active app
The finished text is pasted at your cursor via the clipboard, or typed directly. See Output.
The assistant
When you ask the assistant a question (the quick ask), the question goes to whichever model you chose:- Built-in engine. A local llama.cpp process. No key, no network.
- A local server. Ollama or LM Studio on your own machine.
- A cloud provider. Your own API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. See Providers.
What stays local, what goes to the cloud
There is no telemetry, no analytics, and no account. More detail is in Privacy.