Running speech recognition and TTS locally is quite feasible, as projects like this one show.
ouch - this is ironic in an extreme, given Apple's OS layers and anti-GPL efforts
next, personal computers that come with a secret OS that can read all RAM by remote command?
Edit: never mind, I see you already suggested the Shokz OpenComm2 in another comment. Thanks!
https://etsc.eu/tiny-proportion-of-drivers-understand-danger...
Seems like an overreaction.
All the studies show it's not an over-reaction, you're 400% more likely to have an accident. It is extremely dangerous and it's not an over-reaction, the more people do this, the more people die. It's simple maths. If you're doing extended programming sessions, you're not paying attention to the road like you should be.
And no, talking to a passenger is not as dangerous as it's a different cognitive load.
It'll take you 20 seconds to google this, please do and stop putting everyone else in jeopardy.
After googling the 8th or 10th result had a link to the study I assume you are referencing.
I just don't agree with you. I believe that there is risk when driving inherently although relatively low and a 400% increase from 0.0001 to 0.0004 does not really concern me.
I have been in one accident in 15 years and I was not at fault and it was unavoidable.
Many people engage in all sorts of distracted driving, texting, eating, driving while tired etc. which I would wager are more detrimental than speaking on the phone.
Having your one bone to pick being speaking on the phone just seems absurd and an odd message to preach when nearly everyone does it.
But there are countless projects I work on this way. Eg, I got an email from person X, it says it encountered a bug when doing x and y. Codex reads the email (using nvidia/gliner-PII to hide PII data) and investigates the reason for the bug and proposes a solution. I ask it to implement the fix on my dev server and increase test coverage. I enjoy my walk and after say 7 minutes get a an overview of the fix and can decide to deploy to production.
I would die In minutes
[1] hex https://github.com/kitlangton/Hex
I used to use Handy but as of a few months ago it had stuttering and other issues so I switched to Hex. Even for relatively long minute long dictation, transcription is near instant and accuracy is more than sufficient, especially when talking to AI since it that can “read between the lines “.
Using voice with code agents is a huge unlock and I’m surprised to see some people I recommend it to, still resist it.
As for TTS I found it fun to make a voice plugin for Claude Code that uses PocketTTS, so it can give brief updates whenever it finishes a turn:
https://pchalasani.github.io/claude-code-tools/plugins-detai...
(this inspired some more demo-y stuff I have where claude can manipulate the mouse and audit things it's built visually in conjunction with that). I'm sure this has already been wrapped up into some MCP framework, but it was fun to build it super early on and it just sort of works for me.
I don't use this in my day job, but it does feel very futuristic when I pull up my home lab.
I built this myself with whisper -> “secretary” prompt -> Claude Code, but having the first two steps be interactive is really what I would want.
I acknowledge this may just mean I haven't tried enough modern voice recognition systems. But I've used Whisper and I don't think it works nearly as well for real-time speech.
(I still don't tend to use voice mode in Claude Code because I find typing more comfortable.)
I started ottex half a year ago after I tested gemini 2.5 flash native audio support. I was blown away by the quality of transcripts and decided to built an app to use it myself.
Currently the default model in the app is Gemini 3 flash, but you can connect to 9 providers and God knows how many models to play with.
I would suggest you to try this models for ai prompting:
- Gemini 3 / 3.5 flash - Soniox rtt v5 - Mistral transcribe v2 - assembly 3.5 pro
I intend to use it to work on low stakes vibe coding projects while I'm doing other stuff. Todays LLMs are a lot better at interpreting rambling dictation with mid-message corrections.
There are a few paid programs out there that do the same, but they made my vibe slop sense tingle and are not aimed at development.
However, being able to interact with these natural language systems in uncontrolled settings is still a fools errand. For STT, there is also regional dialect, slang, and individual differences.
Witnessing blind users hit unrecognizable reading-speeds on old Gordon 8 TTS systems was surprising. I learned people adapt to imperfect systems pretty quickly. =3