📢 Sayit

A tiny Bash script that listens to your system microphone, transcribes speech locally with Whisper (via whisper-cli), cleans up the text, and “types” it into the active window using wtype.

Run it once to start listening. Run it again to stop and paste the result—no tray icons, no GUI, just a simple toggle.

• 🎤 Speech transcription using whisper.cpp small.en model
• 🔧 Select a different model by specifying WHISPER_MODEL environment variable
• 📥 Automatically downloads the selected Whisper model to XDG_DATA_HOME\whisper
• ⌨️ Direct text input to any focused application using wtype
• 🚀 GPU acceleration support via CUDA where available
• 🔄 Simple toggle mechanism to start/stop recording
• 🪶 Minimal shell script implementation

Sayit captures audio from your default audio input via ffmpeg, processes it through Whisper for speech recognition, and automatically types the transcribed text using wtype. The tool uses a quit file mechanism for clean start/stop control.

• 🐧 Linux system (x86_64 or aarch64)
• ❄️ Nix package manager with flakes enabled
• 🎤 Working microphone connected to your system
• 🪟 Wayland (required for putting text in active window via wtype)

As Whisper.cpp is compiled with CUDA support unfree packages need to be allowed.

Add to you nixos config...

# flake.nix

inputs = {
  sayit.url = "github:champloo/sayit";
  sayit.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};

outputs = {
  # Add it to nixpkgs overlay so that it inherits your unfree settings
  nixosConfigurations = {
    configName = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      specialArgs = { inherits inputs; };
      modules = [
        (
          { pkgs, inputs, ... }:
          {
            nixpkgs.overlays = [
              inputs.sayit.overlays.default
            ];
          }
        )
        ./configuration.nix
      ];
  };
}

# configuration.nix

  nixpkgs.config.allowUnfreePredicate =
    pkg:
    builtins.elem (pkgs.lib.getName pkg) [
      # sayit dependencies
      "cuda_cccl"
      "cuda_cudart"
      "libcublas"
      "cuda_nvcc"
    ];
  
  # Alternativelly you can allow unfree for all packages.
  # nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
     sayit
  ];

You can also try it out by running directly from shell...

NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1 nix run github:champloo/sayit --impure

1. Start recording: Run sayit to begin capturing audio
2. Stop recording: Run sayit again to stop recording and type the transcribed text
3. The transcribed text will be automatically typed into whatever application currently has focus

You can set up a keybinding for sayit to allow you to quickly start and stop transcription.