Show HN: Dictata – Local Whisper dictation with LLM cleanup

Dictata v0.1.0, a 100% local system-wide voice dictation app for Windows built in Rust, transcribes speech via whisper.cpp and offers optional LLM cleanup, with no data leaving the machine. The release supports hotkey dictation, streaming mode, Vulkan GPU acceleration, multiple audio sources, and custom vocabulary, but Linux is not supported in this version.

100% local system-wide voice dictation for Windows, in native Rust. Press a global hotkey, speak, press again: the text is transcribed locally by whisper.cpp https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp and pasted into the active application. No data ever leaves the machine. Current release: v0.1.0 — see CHANGELOG.md /AntoineChatry/Dictata/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md . Hotkey dictation toggle or push-to-talk , automatic paste into the active application, floating dock with waveform configurable size, opacity and position . Continuous mode streaming : text is inserted as you speak, at every detected pause. Silence skipping VAD : optional whisper.cpp voice-activity detection on standard non-streaming dictation — less compute and fewer hallucinations on silence. Downloads a small ~2 MB model on first use; toggle in Configuration. Vulkan GPU transcription AMD/Intel/NVIDIA or CPU — whisper-rs with the vulkan feature. Audio sources : microphone, system audio WASAPI loopback or a mix of both meeting mode . Output modes : raw, or post-processing through a local OpenAI-compatible LLM cleanup, email, message, list… , with customizable prompts. Transcribe a file audio/video, History page — any format handled by ffmpeg.- Custom vocabulary and replacements injected as the initial prompt. - Built-in ggml model library : download, delete, and hardware-aware recommendations detected GPU/VRAM when running on Vulkan, CPU/RAM otherwise . HuggingFace search : install any ggml .bin model from a direct URL, a repo owner/name or a keyword search. fr / en / es interface , dark theme, system tray icon, transcription history. - Windows 10/11. Linux is not supported in this release — see LINUX.md /AntoineChatry/Dictata/blob/master/LINUX.md for what works, what does not, and why. ffmpeg https://ffmpeg.org/ in PATH only for "Transcribe a file" .- To build with GPU support: the Vulkan SDK https://vulkan.lunarg.com/ and the Visual Studio Build Tools CMake + Ninja included . cargo build --release Build specifics: - MAX PATH workaround Windows : whisper.cpp's vulkan-shaders-gen sub-project can exceed the Windows MAX PATH limit 260 characters and break MSBuild FTK1011/C1083 . If that happens, create a local untracked .cargo/config.toml pointing the build to a short path at a drive root: build target-dir = "C:/wt" any short path The executable and its config.json then live in <target-dir \<profile \ . - After a cargo clean , rebuild inside a Visual Studio environment with the Ninja generator: VsDevCmd.bat -arch=amd64 && set CMAKE GENERATOR=Ninja && set CMAKE GENERATOR INSTANCE= && set VULKAN SDK=<SDK path && cargo build For a CPU-only build no Vulkan SDK required : cargo build --release --no-default-features powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\release-windows.ps1 -Variant both Runs the tests, builds, and writes dist\dictata-<version -windows-x86 64 -cpu .zip with its SHA-256. The zip contains only dictata.exe , README.md , LICENSE and CHANGELOG.md : no config.json is shipped the app writes its own defaults on first run, and a development config.json carries personal data . The binary is self-contained — no DLL to ship alongside it; the Vulkan build uses the loader provided by the graphics driver. The executable carries its icon and version metadata, embedded by build.rs via winresource . The icon itself is drawn by a script rather than checked in as an opaque blob — edit the numbers and regenerate all sizes at once: powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\make-icon.ps1 scripts/release-linux.sh mirrors the packaging script, but has never been run — see LINUX.md /AntoineChatry/Dictata/blob/master/LINUX.md . - Launch the executable: the application lives in the system tray. - Open Settings tray menu, or set the DICTATA OPEN SETTINGS=1 environment variable at launch : pick a model in the Models page built-in download , set the hotkey, language and audio source. - Place the cursor where you want to write, press the hotkey default Ctrl+Alt+Space , speak, press again. Hold for about half a second to cancel the current take — Escape is read globally, so a plain tap is left to the application you are typing into. Esc The configuration is read from config.json next to the executable, or from the directory pointed to by the DICTATA HOME environment variable. The file must be UTF-8 without BOM . GPU: gpu config field — "auto" default, uses Vulkan when available , "cpu" , "vulkan" , "cuda" . | Module | Role | |---|---| main.rs | Orchestration: states, hotkey, dock, transcription threads | audio.rs | cpal capture mic / loopback / mix , 16 kHz resampling, ffmpeg decoding | transcriber.rs | whisper-rs wrapper model loading, transcription | streaming.rs | Continuous mode: pause-based chunking, progressive emission | settings.rs | Settings window 8 pages, egui — presentation | settings logic.rs | Settings business logic, testable without UI | dock.rs | Floating dock waveform, states | modes.rs / llm.rs | Output modes and local LLM post-processing | models.rs | ggml catalog, download/delete, HuggingFace search, paths | i18n.rs | fr/en/es translations tr | config.rs / history.rs / paste.rs / hotkey.rs / tray.rs / hardware.rs / platform.rs | Config, history, paste, global hotkey, tray, hardware detection, Windows integration | cargo test 64 unit tests config, resampling, mixing, modes, settings logic, hardware rating, HuggingFace query parsing, audio-context sizing, history retention, cancel gesture, download safety… . A CLI example is provided: cargo run --example transcribe -- <file.wav DICTATA GPU=1 for GPU Licensed under the MIT License with the Commons Clause — see LICENSE /AntoineChatry/Dictata/blob/master/LICENSE . Free to use, copy, modify, distribute and self-host, for personal or any other purpose. You may not : you cannot sell the software, or offer a paid product or service hosting, SaaS, paywall, paid support… whose value derives substantially from it. Sell it © 2026 Antoine Chatry.