Voice to Notes

A desktop application that transcribes audio and video recordings with speaker identification, synchronized playback, and AI-powered analysis. Export to SRT, WebVTT, ASS captions, plain text, or Markdown.

Features

• Speech-to-Text — Accurate transcription via faster-whisper with word-level timestamps. Supports 99 languages.
• Speaker Identification — Detect and label speakers using pyannote.audio. Rename speakers for clean exports.
• GPU Acceleration — CUDA support for NVIDIA GPUs (Windows/Linux). Falls back to CPU automatically.
• Synchronized Playback — Click any word to seek. Waveform visualization via wavesurfer.js.
• AI Chat — Ask questions about your transcript. Works with Ollama (local), OpenAI, Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible API.
• Export — SRT, WebVTT, ASS, plain text, Markdown — all with speaker labels.
• Cross-Platform — Linux, Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon).

Quick Start

1. Download the installer from Releases
2. On first launch, choose CPU or CUDA sidecar (the AI engine downloads separately, ~500MB–2GB)
3. Import an audio/video file and click Transcribe

See the full User Guide for detailed setup and usage instructions.

Platform Support

Platform	Architecture	Installers
Linux	x86_64	.deb, .rpm
Windows	x86_64	.msi, .exe (NSIS)
macOS	ARM (Apple Silicon)	.dmg

Architecture

The app is split into two independently versioned components:

• App (v0.2.x) — Tauri desktop shell with Svelte frontend. Small installer (~50MB).
• Sidecar (v1.x) — Python ML engine (faster-whisper, pyannote.audio). Downloaded on first launch. CPU (~500MB) or CUDA (~2GB) variants.

This separation means app UI updates don't require re-downloading the sidecar, and sidecar updates don't require reinstalling the app.

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Desktop shell	Tauri v2 (Rust + Svelte 5 / TypeScript)
Transcription	faster-whisper (CTranslate2)
Speaker ID	pyannote.audio 3.1
Audio UI	wavesurfer.js
Transcript editor	TipTap (ProseMirror)
AI (local)	Ollama (any model)
AI (cloud)	OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenAI-compatible
Caption export	pysubs2
Database	SQLite (rusqlite)

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• Rust (stable)
• Python 3.11+ with uv or pip
• Linux: libgtk-3-dev, libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libappindicator3-dev, librsvg2-dev

Getting Started

# Install frontend dependencies
npm install

# Install Python sidecar dependencies
cd python && pip install -e ".[dev]" && cd ..

# Run in dev mode (uses system Python for the sidecar)
npm run tauri:dev

Building

# Build the frozen Python sidecar (CPU-only)
cd python && python build_sidecar.py --cpu-only && cd ..

# Build with CUDA support
cd python && python build_sidecar.py --with-cuda && cd ..

# Build the Tauri app
npm run tauri build

CI/CD

Two Gitea Actions workflows in .gitea/workflows/:

release.yml — Triggers on push to main:

1. Bumps app version (patch), creates git tag and Gitea release
2. Builds lightweight app installers for all platforms (no sidecar bundled)

build-sidecar.yml — Triggers on changes to python/ or manual dispatch:

1. Bumps sidecar version, creates sidecar-v* tag and release
2. Builds CPU + CUDA variants for Linux/Windows, CPU for macOS
3. Uploads as separate release assets

Required Secrets

Secret	Purpose
BUILD_TOKEN	Gitea API token for creating releases and pushing tags

Project Structure

src/                        # Svelte 5 frontend
  lib/components/           # UI components (waveform, transcript editor, settings, etc.)
  lib/stores/               # Svelte stores (settings, transcript state)
  routes/                   # SvelteKit pages
src-tauri/                  # Rust backend
  src/sidecar/              # Sidecar process manager (download, extract, IPC)
  src/commands/             # Tauri command handlers
  nsis-hooks.nsh            # Windows uninstall cleanup
python/                     # Python sidecar
  voice_to_notes/           # Python package (transcription, diarization, AI, export)
  build_sidecar.py          # PyInstaller build script
  voice_to_notes.spec       # PyInstaller spec
.gitea/workflows/           # CI/CD (release.yml, build-sidecar.yml)
docs/                       # Documentation

License

MIT