Harp 🎵

Harp is a local-first, real-time speech-to-text engine for Linux (Wayland) with two front-ends:

• Live dictation (harp start) — hold (or toggle) Ctrl+Space and speak; the final transcription is pasted into the focused window on release.
• File transcription (harp transcribe <file>) — stream-transcribe a recording (meeting, lecture, voice memo) in near real-time, printed live and optionally appended to a file.

Under the hood a VAD-segmented streaming engine finalizes each spoken chunk at silence boundaries (via Silero VAD), decoding it once with faster-whisper and never re-transcribing finalized speech — so a long recording streams out as you go instead of waiting for the end. Everything is on-device; there is no cloud step.

📚 Documentation

For in-depth information, please refer to our documentation:

• CLI Reference: Full guide to the harp command and its options.
• Deployment & Setup: Detailed guide on permissions, dependencies, and configuration.
• Internal Architecture: How Harp works under the hood.
• Development Guide: How to contribute and run tests.

✨ Features

• Local-First, Fully Offline: Powered by faster-whisper. Your voice never leaves your machine.
• VAD-Segmented Streaming Engine: Finalizes each spoken chunk at silence boundaries (Silero VAD), decoding it once and never re-transcribing finalized speech — so long audio streams out as you go. Real-time on CPU (RTF ≈ 0.34 on base).
• Long-Form File Transcription (harp transcribe): Stream-transcribe meetings, lectures, and voice memos in near real-time; print live and append to a file with -o.
• Live Dictation (harp start): Hold (or --toggle) Ctrl + Space; the final transcription is pasted into the focused window via uinput on release.
• Library-First: Drive a HarpSession from your own code; it emits two-tier TranscriptEvents (committed + transient). See docs/library.md.
• Model Management CLI: Download, list, and manage Whisper models (tiny, base, small, medium, large-v3) via harp models.
• Modern CLI: Terminal UI powered by Rich.

Model choice: base is the recommended floor — robust and real-time on CPU. tiny is faster but can hallucinate on fluent/pause-less audio; use it only for latency-critical, error-tolerant cases.

🚀 Installation

Using uv (Recommended)

The fastest way to run Harp without manual environment setup:

uvx harpio

Using pipx

For a persistent global installation:

pipx install harpio

From Source

git clone https://github.com/apiad/harp.git
cd harp
uv sync
uv run harp start

🛠 Setup & Requirements

1. Permissions: Harp requires access to /dev/input and /dev/uinput.

sudo usermod -aG input $USER
# You may also need to set udev rules for uinput or run:
sudo chmod 666 /dev/uinput

2. Whisper Model: Before starting for the first time, download a Whisper model.

harp models download base

3. Dependencies: Ensure libportaudio2 and wl-clipboard (for Wayland clipboard support) are installed.

sudo apt install libportaudio2 wl-clipboard

⌨️ Usage

Start the daemon using the CLI. By default, running harp without arguments starts the background daemon in "Hold Mode" and only prints the result to the terminal.

harp

Commands

• harp / harp start: Start the live-dictation daemon (hotkey-driven).
• harp transcribe <file>: Stream-transcribe an audio file.
• harp models <download|list|remove>: Manage local Whisper models.
• harp config / harp init: Inspect or scaffold .harp.yaml.

harp start options

harp transcribe options

Examples

Transcribe a meeting recording to a file, live:

harp transcribe meeting.m4a -m base -l en -o meeting.md

Live dictation, all symbols, toggle mode:

harp start --toggle --full

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

🤖 Gemini CLI

This repository is enhanced with custom Gemini CLI commands to automate common tasks and workflows. If you are using Gemini, you can run:

gemini /onboard

to get started, explore the project architecture, and understand the automated workflows (planning, debugging, releases, etc.).

Standard Process

1. Report Bugs: Open an issue if you find something broken.
2. Suggest Features: Have an idea for a new mode? Let us know!
3. Submit Pull Requests:
   • Fork the project.
   • Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
   • Commit your changes (git commit -m 'feat: Add some AmazingFeature').
   • Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
   • Open a Pull Request.

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.