cli.md

CLI guide

For the full generated help, run whispers --help or whispers <command> --help.

Top-level commands

Command	Purpose
whispers	Start or stop the default dictation loop
whispers setup	Guided setup for local, cloud, and experimental dictation paths
whispers transcribe <file>	Transcribe an audio file to stdout or a file
whispers model	Legacy whisper_cpp model commands
whispers asr-model	Manage ASR models across recommended and experimental backends
whispers rewrite-model	Manage local rewrite models
whispers dictionary	Manage deterministic replacements
whispers app-rule	Manage app-aware rewrite policy rules
whispers glossary	Manage technical glossary entries
whispers cloud check	Validate cloud config and connectivity
whispers snippets	Manage spoken snippets
whispers rewrite-instructions-path	Print the custom rewrite instructions file path
whispers completions [shell]	Print shell completions to stdout

Common flows

Setup and dictation

whispers setup
whispers

File transcription

whispers transcribe audio.wav
whispers transcribe meeting.m4a --output transcript.txt
whispers transcribe audio.wav --raw

ASR model management

whispers asr-model list
whispers asr-model download large-v3-turbo
whispers asr-model select large-v3-turbo

whispers model still exists for legacy whisper_cpp flows, but whispers asr-model is the preferred interface.

Rewrite model management

whispers rewrite-model list
whispers rewrite-model download qwen-3.5-4b-q4_k_m
whispers rewrite-model select qwen-3.5-4b-q4_k_m

Personalization

whispers dictionary add "wisper flow" "Wispr Flow"
whispers snippets add signature "Best regards,\nNotes"

Rewrite policy files

whispers app-rule path
whispers glossary path
whispers rewrite-instructions-path

App-aware rewrite rules

whispers app-rule list
whispers app-rule add jira-browser \
  "Prefer issue IDs and preserve markdown punctuation" \
  --surface-kind browser \
  --browser-domain-contains atlassian.net
whispers app-rule remove jira-browser

Technical glossary entries

whispers glossary list
whispers glossary add serde_json \
  --alias "surdy json" \
  --alias "serdy json" \
  --surface-kind editor
whispers glossary remove serde_json

Cloud and shell integration

whispers cloud check
whispers completions zsh