Whisper Code

Real-Time Voice Dictation for VS Code, Powered by Whisper Flow

Real-time voice dictation for VS Code, powered by self-hosted Whisper through whisper-flow. Biases transcription with your workspace symbols so it spells useMemo right, and adapts to whether you're dictating a comment, a commit message, or a prompt.

Status: preview. Dictation works end to end against a whisper-flow server. Expect rough edges; see docs/specs for the design.

Usage

Action	How
Start / stop dictation	Press Cmd+Alt+D (macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+D (Windows/Linux)
	Or click the microphone Dictate item in the status bar
	Or run Whisper Code: Toggle Dictation from the Command Palette

The status bar shows Connecting, then Dictating while it records. Text appears dimmed as you speak and settles when each phrase is final; toggle again to stop. Each phrase is one undo step.

Output adapts to where the cursor is:

• Code comment: sentences start with a capital letter after the comment marker, and long comments wrap at column 80, continuing with the same marker (// , *, # …).
• Commit message (COMMIT_EDITMSG, git commit editor): the subject line has no trailing period and isn't wrapped; the body wraps at column 72.
• AI chat input (Copilot Chat and similar): press the same shortcut while the chat input has focus. Each finished phrase is typed into it; partial text isn't shown there.
• Anything else (prose, prompts): inserted as spoken.

Identifiers from your workspace (such as useMemo or getUserById) are sent to the server as a vocabulary hint and respelled in the text, so "use memo" comes out as useMemo. Open editors count most, then other source files in the workspace.

Requirements

• A whisper-flow server, 1.1.0 or newer (1.2.0+ for the vocabulary hint and model choice). Run it yourself, for example with ./run.sh -run-server or Docker. No third-party cloud speech service is used.
• A command-line audio recorder: SoX (brew install sox, apt install sox), or arecord on Linux, or ffmpeg on macOS and Linux.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
whisperCode.serverUrl	http://localhost:8181	whisper-flow server. A non-local server asks for your confirmation once, and warns without https.
whisperCode.model	(server default)	Model from the server's /ready list, such as base.en.pt.
whisperCode.vocabulary.enabled	true	Bias transcription toward identifiers from your workspace.
whisperCode.vocabulary.scanWorkspace	true	Also read source files that aren't open (skips node_modules, build output and similar).
whisperCode.vocabulary.maxFiles	500	Most workspace files to read for the vocabulary.
whisperCode.wrap.comments	80	Column to wrap dictated comments at; 0 turns it off.
whisperCode.wrap.commitBody	72	Column to wrap commit message bodies at; 0 turns it off.
whisperCode.recorderCommand	(auto)	Command that writes raw 16 kHz mono 16-bit little-endian PCM to stdout, if the defaults don't suit you.

If the server sets WF_API_KEY, run Whisper Code: Set API Key. The key is kept in VS Code's secret storage, not in settings.json.

Running from source

Requirements: Node.js 20+ and VS Code 1.95+.

git clone https://github.com/dimastatz/whisper-code
cd whisper-code
npm install

Then open the folder in VS Code and press F5. A new Extension Development Host window opens with the extension loaded; try the shortcut there.

Install a release

Download the .vsix from the latest release and run code --install-extension whisper-code-<version>.vsix.

Build and install a VSIX

npx @vscode/vsce package          # produces whisper-code-<version>.vsix
code --install-extension whisper-code-*.vsix

Development

npm run compile        # build to out/
npm run watch          # rebuild on change
npm run format         # format with Prettier
npm run check          # format check, lint, typecheck, tests with 95% coverage gate

Every pull request runs the same checks in GitHub Actions, plus CodeQL security analysis.

Design docs live in docs/specs. See CLAUDE.md for contributor and agent conventions.

License

MIT