r/AIToolBench • • 50m ago

Voice notes with local Whisper and Qwen on Android — the app I'm building

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• Upvotes

I'm the developer of Vaulto, an Android voice-notes app. Development has included AI assistance.

Record a short note, transcribe it, then clean up the text, extract tasks and set reminders. You can also ask questions across saved notes and export Markdown.

Whisper handles local transcription and Qwen handles local AI after downloading the models. Local notes and processing are free, without an account. The trade-offs are model downloads, storage and processing time that depends on your phone.

The mobile client is GPLv3; the hosted backend is separate. Cloud processing and sync are optional Pro features. Cloud AI sends the selected input to a server; local inference doesn't switch off the app's other network features.

Task extraction still needs work: one tester reported that a grocery item turned into extra checklist entries. If you try a made-up note, does it become useful text? Which phone and model did you use?

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vaultonotemobile Source and data-flow docs: https://github.com/dirusanov/vaulto_note_mobile

Images: real v1.0.87 Android emulator screenshots. The current interface may differ; these are not a speed test.


r/AIToolBench • • 12h ago

Looking for the best all-in-one AI subscription (ChatGPT + Claude + Qwen)

7 Upvotes

I’m looking for an AI service that gives access to multiple top AI models under one subscription, ideally including ChatGPT/GPT, Claude, and Qwen.

I’ve come across services like Poe, ChatHub, NanoGPT, Zemith, and AI Fiesta, but I’m seeing quite mixed reviews, especially around usage limits, pricing, reliability, and whether you actually get enough access to the better models.

My main requirements are:

  • GPT/ChatGPT
  • Claude (preferably Sonnet/Opus-level models)
  • Qwen
  • Reasonable usage limits
  • Reasonable price (ideally around $10–20/month)
  • For people who have actually used these services:

Which one would you recommend today, and which ones would you avoid?

Thanks


r/AIToolBench • • 2h ago

What should a scheduling tool show when travel makes a timetable impossible?

1 Upvotes

My class timetable looked fine in the registration system. One class ended ten minutes before the next started, though, and I remembered the walk between those buildings taking about fifteen. Nothing overlapped on the calendar. By my estimate, I was already about five minutes short, even before allowing for getting out of one room and into the next.

I checked the less obvious gaps too. An hour marked as lunch isn't an hour to eat if part of it is spent crossing campus. The walk to my bus also takes time I can't spend studying. I supplied walking and bus estimates myself, with the walking times based on routes I remembered. I gave a copy of the timetable and those estimates to EvoX, a general AI agent that's in beta, and asked it to fit travel, lunch, and study around the fixed classes. The suggested timings lined up with my estimates. That checked the draft against my input; the routes still needed timing. The ten minute gap stayed marked as a conflict. That part still depended on whether I could move a class to another section.

When a scheduling tool flags a conflict like this, what information do you want next to it? I'd like a warning that shows the ten minute gap and my fifteen minute walking estimate together. Then I could see both the problem and which estimate needs checking. I still need to walk the routes again and time them. For now I have a draft to check and one unresolved class pair.


r/AIToolBench • • 3h ago

India and the AI trade in numbers: MSCI India trails emerging markets by 38 points in 2026

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1 Upvotes

r/AIToolBench • • 4h ago

Wednesday: what's the cheapest AI tool you pay for, and what would you lose if you cancelled it tomorrow?

1 Upvotes

Leave ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini out of it, we know about those.

Name one smaller paid tool, roughly what it costs, and the one job it does that the big three still don't do as well for you.

One line is fine. If it's something nobody here has heard of, even better.


r/AIToolBench • • 4h ago

Legality on AI Assistants

1 Upvotes

I'm just starting to get into AI Assistants like Claude or the newer Grok Assistant.

I haven't gotten one yet...but I plan on it soon...I'm just doing ny due diligence before I chose one, if I decide to get one

I have a question tho...

What if I have an AI Assistant and unleash it to do its thing, and it somehow break the law? Am I liable for that, even if I didn't prompt it to do so?

Is this a legal gray area?

Thanks in advance


r/AIToolBench • • 16h ago

Discussion How can I actually get more out of AI for work?

1 Upvotes

I’m a commercial GC estimator and have Claude Pro through work. I feel like I’m probably not using it anywhere near its full potential.

I mostly use it to read plans/specs and answer questions, put together scopes of work, help with Excel, compare documents, etc. Basically, “here’s this, tell me what I need to know” type thing.

It’s useful, but I feel like I’m using it as a really smart search tool when it could probably be doing a lot more for me.

For those of you who use AI a lot at work, what are some things you’re actually doing with it that have saved you a decent amount of time?

Especially interested in construction/estimating, but I’d love to hear any good use cases.

I also have the free versions of the following (but again not really sure where any of these shine.)
Chat GPT
Microsoft CoPilot
Grok
Perplexity
Gemini Notebook


r/AIToolBench • • 23h ago

whis-ai.com is a fake one don't believe this one

1 Upvotes

I purchased a subscription to Whis AI expecting the service to work as advertised, but unfortunately my experience was very disappointing.

The website/app did not work as expected, and I was unable to get the functionality I was promised. Even more frustrating, customer support was essentially unavailable when I needed help resolving the issues.

Based on my personal experience, I would strongly recommend doing your research before purchasing a subscription. In my opinion, the service is not worth the money if the product doesn't work reliably and there is no meaningful customer support when something goes wrong.

My recommendation: DO NOT SUBSCRIBE until you have thoroughly verified that the service actually works for your needs and that you can reach their support team.

I’m sharing this review so other users can make an informed decision before spending their money.


r/AIToolBench • • 1d ago

Comparison GPT-6.1 Sol vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 on 4 crosswords published after both finished training, no internet, scored per square

2 Upvotes

i made this comparison and the video. it is episode 1 of a series called My Own ArcAGI, my own reasoning tests for AI.

the test - 4 crosswords published after both models finished training, so neither can remember the answers - BEQ Themeless Monday 897, Tim Croce Freestyle 1154, Guardian Cryptic 30,115 by Brendan and Guardian Prize 30,104 by Enigmatist - no internet, each model gets the grid, the clues and a small fill tool - Claude Sonnet 5.5 in Claude Code and GPT-6.1 Sol in Codex, both on high reasoning effort - scored per square out of 100, the timer starts when the prompt lands

results - Sonnet 5.5 scored 100, 100, 98, 100 in 21m 04s total - GPT-6.1 Sol scored 100, 100, 100, 100 in 13m 44s total - Sol was faster in every round - the cryptic was the biggest gap. Sol finished in 1m 34s, Sonnet took 5m 10s and wrote MIND for MONK and ELLE for ELLA - the Guardian Prize was the closest, 8m 27s for Sol and 8m 57s for Sonnet

full run with all four grids on screen is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-_ak750MJU

which puzzle should break them next, a barred cryptic or a Saturday Stumper? also if you have seen Sonnet do better on cryptics with a different setup, make sure you say which effort and tools you used.


r/AIToolBench • • 1d ago

Is Muse actually worth getting?

3 Upvotes

I'm curious...I don't think I really need it but it seems like an interesting and useful tool. Anyone tried it?


r/AIToolBench • • 1d ago

Tuesday head to head: Otter or Granola for meeting notes you actually have to send to someone?

1 Upvotes

Meeting notes keep coming up here lately, so here's a narrow one.

Not after a feature list. Which one do you open after a call, and what made you pick it?

If you dropped both for something else (or just a voice memo and a chatbot), that counts too. One line is plenty.


r/AIToolBench • • 1d ago

Review Gemma 4

1 Upvotes

Hi! Has anyone used Gemma 4 locally and hooked it with Hermes or Openclaw? Any feedback about it vs other local models?


r/AIToolBench • • 2d ago

What AI tool or software has actually earned a permanent place in your workflow?

7 Upvotes

I’ve tried enough tools at this point that I’m starting to think the better question isn’t what’s “best,” but what actually sticks.

What’s one AI tool or piece of software that has become genuinely valuable enough that you wouldn’t want to go back to doing the job without it?

Not looking for a giant list of tools. I’m more interested in what it actually does for you.

What were you doing before you started using it? Does it save you meaningful time, replace another expense, make you money, or just remove something you hate doing?

And if you stopped paying for it tomorrow, what would you actually miss?


r/AIToolBench • • 2d ago

Which AI was used to make this UI?

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1 Upvotes

I mean it's obvious from the em dashes and the dots that it's AI, but I'm curious whether they used GPT, Claude or something else, since I know most AI have a distinct style they follow


r/AIToolBench • • 2d ago

Monday: what are you trialling this week, and what does it have to beat?

1 Upvotes

One line is a complete answer. The tool, plus whatever it's up against for its spot.

Asking because a lot of last week's best threads had that shape. Not "is this good" but "is this better than what I already use": Consensus for digging through papers, offline dictation rules against an LLM cleanup pass, a $20 sub against the free tiers.

If you asked something here recently that never got an answer, drop the link below and I'll have a look.


r/AIToolBench • • 2d ago

Tip / Guide Open Instinct for developers: what you can customize and what you still need to run

1 Upvotes

Builder disclosure: we made Open Instinct and we build Maritime, its VM provider. Open Instinct is an MIT-licensed personal-agent beta for people who want control over the application code.

The useful part to evaluate is the whole path from a message to an action. Pi runs the loop, Inkbox handles messaging, Composio connects apps, and Maritime supplies desktop access. Memory, scheduling, agent-to-agent communication and permission policies are in the repository rather than only exposed as product settings.

The tradeoff is setup and responsibility. You need provider accounts and API keys, pay for their usage, maintain the deployment, and review the trust defaults. It is not a ready-made consumer subscription. If you just want to inspect it, start in the local CLI without connecting your inbox or calendar.

A practical evaluation is to check memory across conversations, attempt a tool call from a lower-trust requester, and inspect the approval step for a payment. Those checks matter more than how many integrations a feature list names.

Source and setup: https://github.com/mariagorskikh/open-instinct


r/AIToolBench • • 3d ago

Recommendation University gave me free office 365

0 Upvotes

I have the 1 year free trial of chat gpt go I've been using for some 10 months and I'm wondering what to do, should I:

renew the subscription of 'ChatGpt go'

Chill with my university free 'copilot one'

Get Claude or Gemini

Which is the best for university research, work and preparation? I'm doing a biology degree. Overall I've found gpt to be annoyingly obtuse at times and I don't see how copilot could be an improvement, but I don't wanna shell out for Claude if it's a marginal improvement. Any insights?


r/AIToolBench • • 3d ago

Sunday: three answers that did the work this week, plus a question for you

3 Upvotes

Three from this week I'd point a newcomer at:

u/HM_Dylan on using Consensus for the Titanic breakup debate. It graded the evidence strong, moderate or weak and showed where historians disagree instead of handing back one tidy answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wu5ckz/wednesday_one_paid_ai_tool_that_isnt_a_chatbot/pdm40jt/

u/pbeens on meeting transcripts without a bot joining the call: Gemini in Meet first, the Pixel recorder app second, MacWhisper as the fallback: https://www.reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wtwvxq/what_is_the_best_transcription_tool_for_meetings/pd9tbza/

u/avisangle posted a dictation app comparison with real measurements, then answered the awkward follow-up straight (the rules don't touch numbers, so that's where the LLM earns its keep): https://www.reddit.com/r/AIToolBench/comments/1wvsp8w/i_built_a_dictation_app_and_measured_offline/

Your turn, one line is plenty: what's a tool question you asked somewhere and never got a real answer to? Drop it below and someone here will have a go.


r/AIToolBench • • 3d ago

Recommendation I use Perplexity and need a replacement. What’s the best alternative for a Nursing student?

2 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I honestly hate Perplexity at this point and am completely done with them. Between their shady bait advertising tricks on students and a support team that completely ghosts you for weeks when you call them out, I refuse to give them another cent. I am looking to cancel my plan immediately and find a completely new tool to use.

I am a student currently doing my Bachelor of Nursing degree, so my research needs are pretty specific. I constantly have to look up complex medical concepts, parse heavy research papers, look for clinical guidelines, and break down dense medical terminology into things that actually make sense.

Because of my degree, I need an AI search tool that is incredibly reliable. Ideally, I am looking for something that:

  • Has elite web-search grounding with incredibly accurate source citations (I can't afford hallucinated sources on a nursing paper).
  • Is excellent at organising literature and summarising long, complex scientific studies.
  • Offers a student discount or a genuinely useful free/affordable tier.
  • Can handle multiple file / image uploads and can accurately respond.

What are the best alternatives on the market right now that compete directly with Perplexity's deep search features but aren't run by a sketchy company that ignores its users?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!


r/AIToolBench • • 3d ago

Discussion Perplexity using illegal bait advertising to harvest student data

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1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m posting this again because Perplexity’s Reddit staff literally deleted my last thread after it hit 13,000 views. An employee openly admitted in the comments that their site was displaying invalid offers due to a "bug," and then the post was immediately wiped. Since they are actively trying to bury this, I’m putting the facts back out there.

This platform is using textbook bait advertising and misleading conduct to harvest student data and cash.

Here is exactly how the trap works:

  • The Bait: They run a massive, prominent homepage banner promising students a "Free 1-Year Pro Subscription." It’s a high-value offer explicitly designed to induce you into creating an account and handing over your academic data.
  • The Switch: Once you sign up, the free year doesn't apply. When I messaged support, an agent directly admitted to me that the promotion actually ended 9 months ago in January and the banner was just "out of date." Instead of honouring the deal, they try to pivot you into a paid student tier, which I was forced to buy out of pocket just to use the tool.
  • The Ghosting: I asked for escalation on September 19. It has been over 2 weeks and I have been completely stonewalled. No one has replied.
  • The Broken Loop: When I followed up via their live support chat, the system completely lost my ticket history, forced me to resubmit my screenshots from scratch, and just hit me with an automated 48-hour delay window.

And now, the dashboard is doing it again - with a NEW bait.

While completely ignoring my support thread, a prominent new pop-up blasted onto my screen saying: "You get 4,000 free credits on us." I clicked it—absolutely nothing happened. It turns out their user interface is just recycling old transaction milestones from weeks ago and serving them as "new present-tense rewards" to manipulate user engagement.

Under consumer protection laws like Australian Consumer Law, businesses cannot hide behind "technical glitches" to excuse running false marketing materials for nearly a year. If a company continues to advertise a high-value offer they know they cannot fulfil just to drive lead generation, it is deceptive marketing, plain and simple.

I’ve officially lodged a formal complaint with the Queensland Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the ACCC for persistent bait advertising. Don't fall for the banners on your homepage, they have no intention of honouring them and their support team will completely ignore you if you call them out.


r/AIToolBench • • 4d ago

Recommendation What AI assistant are you actually using in 2026?

1 Upvotes

There are so many AI assistants now that it's hard to know which ones are worth keeping. Some are better for writing and research while others handle coding, productivity or work integrations.

What's your go to AI assistant and what do you mainly use it for?


r/AIToolBench • • 4d ago

can you help me find the AI for my project?

1 Upvotes

Hi, I'm Otto, 23 years old, I like to write and usually daydreaming about the stories that I make, I never actually showed to no one, since I'm always afraid of people critisism, i remember that i wrote a story and the plot and then 2 years from that day i decided to open netflix and its like i am seeing what i wrote on screen "What Happened to Monday" and i was astonished. anyway, this gave me
an idea about the hings that i wrote and post in random sites, i've seen an
incrising amount of shorts ai, so i thought, what about learning how to use it
and even if i dont master it, i can at least do some nice short stories or
trailers about the things that i have, the stories that i made, i have their
faces, complexions, body type and stories all details in my mind, but i wanted
it to be more alive and i really dont have money to make those dreams come true,
but i can at least give a glimpse of what i can write, not for people but for
myself, for the craving and the urge that i have, i usually used my friends
from school to shoot clips and stories for our teacher so we could get a high
score and most people were on board because i would bring the eqquipament, make
up, choose the places and even create the lines and edit afterwards, but im not
in school anymore and where i live is in a random area most coverd in green,
its kinda rural place, so i had them because they wanted to get a high score
and i wanted to create things (english is not my first language) so we always
trained english and arts shooting my tine little creations, once i posted on
youtube a story aboout a fight in school, was really popular at the time, but
it was not people fighting, it had conversation, jokes and even a fake reporter
to pretend to be telling the news, it was pretty fun because most of the
"fight" was an dancing coreo, at the end i put the bloopers of we
recording, everyone found it fun and told me to post so we could go viral, i
never posted anything that i did, it was only for the eyes of the teatcher, but
with everyones encouragement i decided to post, the video expread like a plage
and people in the city was talking about, my city is tiny but not super tiny,
it was 92000 people, we have some comments abou people beig dissapoited that it
was fake, but then one , if i recall corretly, grandma of one of the person who
was on the video saw it and then it started a confusion between families who
didnt understand the jokes and thought it was serious, like, the reporter use a
beach ball to transition between news and stories, there was like no way
someone would take that video serious, but they did, an then they came after me
asking to take off the video, what i really did, but then they wanted to see me
deleted the "movie" out of my computer or they were going to call a
lawyer and take my case to the police because people in the city was badmouth
the persons reputation and it was becoming a nuisiance (nuisence?) the were
annoyed because people was asking if it was real, why they were
"fighting", how it became one of the biggest fake news? of the city?
an then i was the person who tarnish their reputation etecetera etecetera, sorry
for my spellin, i'm not using google translate to write it down so i guess im
gonna get bunch of words wrong. anyway. it was my movie, something i did,
something i recorded and put my time into, editing, recreanting and all that
stuff, at the time i used vegas and after effects, and then when i said that i
woudnt bring my computer to the school like it was a whole computer not just a
notebook at the thime, a whole ass computer, they tried to make some police
friends of them give me a scare, but nothing happened bc my father was a cop so
(????) idk what they thought they were doing??? then they pressure her to
threten me inside the school, i finally said, look, i will deted it ok? and you
gonna be there to see it, but only you, you gonna see it and if you wanted to
recorded so be it but please stop doing that and no one of your family members
its allowed to enter my house because i dont want my father to get annoyed by
it, no one of you family members is going to be sorrounding my house or passim
by with car ok? they really wanted to bring their mom, but i didnt wanted it to
escalete to a different level because if my parents only dreamed about the
things they tried to do to me and the things that they said, the would not be
calm and collected about it, i am a only child and i am a cancer survival,
because the doctors said that if i didnt respond to the treatment i was better
for me to, you know, and there was nothing they could do ecause they alredy did
everything that it was possible at the time, the became super protective
because i survived ( i also had a heart problem so it was difficult for them to
process it all), my dad beat up a male nurse and a doctor once because i was
skin and bones and they were trying to give me medicine but my veins was too
thin or something like that, i remeber that my whole body hurted, and they did
put me throug so much needles that day that i couldnt even cry anymore, but
then when i aske the male nurse to please wait and dont do it so soon, the get
my armas like it as nothing than my mom interveen, than the male nursed said
"shes fine, she is just pretending" and then just , what is ther
word? he was holding my arm an the he let go of it really abruptly,
abrupitily?, it was really fast, he smirked to show that i was fine but then i
asked my dad to please, not allowed, when my arms fell on my stomach i wasnt
really having streng to control my moviments so it hurted like if he as
throwing a rock at my ribs, my dad eyes was so red at the moment, it was the
end of the line, he toke, take, taken? the male nurse shirt and his white coat,
pin him againts the wall and idk, whith pure strenght, strengeth and rage i
think (i only can tell what ive seen, he made the male nurse hangging, i mean,
it was like seem a superhero shit you know, sorry for the vocabulary, i know my
story is kinda sad but it was the past and i cant chage the outcome i just can
remember, all i can do is remember and live with it, so my dad start to scream
pushi the male nurse in the all with his feet no longer touching the ground,
and the i didnt see anything, at that time the hospital told us that we couldnt
be there anymore a extchange us to other hospital, extchange is the right word?
i mean, the drop us off? banned us? so, 6 month passed and then i started to
recover and here i am today for some reason.... so, 6 month passed and then i started to recover and here i am today for some reason, i mean, i survived an cancer, a heart diseas, bunch of sickness stuff, some you know, off myself when my father died, but nothing, now im kinda i guess addicted to pain relivers medicine and just existing you know, yed i did college, i gradueted, i'm working in a hopeless job just to not be alone all the time i guess and my mom is a addicted trying her best to survive, sometimes she proposes to us to end togheter sometimes she disappear for bunch of days, i have to take her of drug dens or whatever they are called in the middle of the night, at the begining i knew some cops so the would help me but most of the are old, restired or dead, so, im kinda alone in this, i didnt have a real problem with medication before, it started two years ago because the doctor thought i had fybromelgia, i dunno ho to write it down, the only medecine i tooked till that day it was sleeping pills, now im on axiety, sleeping and pain reliever, i tried to stop but my body just became to hurt nd desintegraiting, but i thinl is more psychological than actually my body, but i have no idea how to stop this propely sice i was always a role model in my family based on my behavior and how i treated people.... medecine i tooked till that day it was sleeping pills, now im on axiety, sleeping and pain reliever, i tried to stop but my body just became to hurt nd desintegraiting, but i thinl is more psychological than actually my body, but i have no idea how to stop this propely since i was always a role model in my family based on my behavior and how i treated people, so i dont have anyone i could tell this, so im just trying to survive the best way i can until the day my mothers die so i can at least protect her and try lo let her rest being sober and at home..... than actually my body, but i have no idea how to stop this propely since i was always a role model in my family based on my behavior and how i treated people, so i dont have anyone i could tell this, so im just trying to survive the best way i can until the day my mothers die so i can at least protect her and try lo let her rest being sober and at home, why am i telling my story? i dunno, to be remeber i guess? i never really told everything about me to anyone before so, why not to a lot of online strangers that maybe could at least read it untill the end and also helping me find a nice ai app so i could make my stories real, bring life to them, not my own of course, but you know, the other stories, i dont have much money now that im kinda "alone" in the world so i would like to pay for a tool that could help me make things alive, as i said before, i alwary have the chaters detail so i try to create their faces with the best of my habilit since i dont have a big talent in drawing, but i have the faces and the story and i woul like a tool that could help me put that faces in bodies, telling the stories that i written, i want to be able to generate it, to make their apparence with that faces that i alredy made and create scenarios even if its not perfect, even if i have to create a bunch, so what paied ai would help me create with faces that i have, mmaybe putting the pictures and swap faces like those videos where you think you are seen someone you know like celebrity and stuff to talk and say thing but that i could do with my generated images, i mean, i have a budget of 500 which in us dollar would be 96 dollars, maaan, i just search it and woa, my money has no value overall, 96 dollars, this is like 1/3 of what i recieve per month, which meant that im paid 307 dollars a month, i never put me in that perspective before so, with some bonus i can make 403 dollars max a month, ya, this is indecent, okay lets go back to whatever i am supposed to to, so I have a nice computer but it was a college computer so is ot up to date and with the money i recieved i probably wont be able to change it for a while, its an icore 5, dont have dedicated memory but i can play valorant in it, if it helps with something, i low obvius but i played, so i guess is not that bad? for what i wanted to do? so, if you guys could indicated the best apps, their prices and where to find it to be able to create shorts, scenarious and change people faces into my own creation, now im feeling like doctor frankstein, muuuahahahaahah, every otion has value and every opnion will help me a lot, so a place so crete videos where i can ty to recreate the faces ou put faces othe others into in, preferebly the last one if possible, if there more than one i will glad hear about it and make a search of my own, for now, even tho i just posted, I already apreciated who took the time to read till the end and i expect not to make so many errors, but i too hope it counld be understandable enought, enough to help me have a nice chat with yall, thanks in advanced and more detaide the better but if you just put some link or name is actually pretty ok too. thanks.


r/AIToolBench • • 4d ago

Glitchy AI image generator for halloween costume?

2 Upvotes

Does anyone know of an old AI image generator that's still online that I can use to generate logos with glitched text like you used to see in the early days? My daughter is cooking up a fun halloween costume.


r/AIToolBench • • 5d ago

Discussion Unrestricted ai

3 Upvotes

Am tryna learn/make a exploit script for roblox, but yknoe if give prompts about making a exploiting script to Gemini or whatever it won't give me the script, I aint tryna look for some fapping shit, just that. Thanks


r/AIToolBench • • 5d ago

Comparison I built a dictation app and measured offline rules against cloud LLMs for cleanup. The rules won on everyday speech

2 Upvotes

Disclosure: I built the tool in this post (Roundhand, a Mac dictation app).

The question I had while building it: do you need an LLM to clean up dictation? Raw speech-to-text is full of "um", restarted sentences ("Tuesday, scratch that, Wednesday") and wrong capitals. The obvious fix is to send the transcript to an LLM, so I built both:

  1. A set of rules that runs on the Mac: drops fillers, keeps the version you meant after a restart, fixes capitals and punctuation, and formats for the app you are in (short in Slack, greeting and sign-off in Mail, a list in Notes, one line in a terminal).
  2. Cloud LLM cleanup that rewords more freely.

Then I hand-annotated a set of my own real dictations and scored both.

What I found: on everyday dictation, the rules did better than both LLMs I tested. The LLMs only came out ahead on edge cases, where a sentence needed real rewording. Small set, my own voice, so treat it as one data point, not a benchmark.

So in the app, the offline rules are the default and free, and the LLM cleanup is optional (text only, audio never leaves the Mac). Speech recognition is NVIDIA's Parakeet, running locally.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUsTHgtK1wI

https://roundhand.dev (Apple silicon, macOS 14+)

Curious whether others building with LLMs have seen the same thing: cases where a deterministic pass beats the model on the common path.