Voice Mode

/voice records your microphone and transcribes your speech locally (on-device with Moonshine AI’s lightweight STT models), placing the transcript in the input field where you can edit it before submitting.

How to use voice-to-code

Type /voice and press Enter to start recording. Speak, then press Enter again (or your configured submit key) to stop and transcribe.

In the TUI you can start a recording at any time by pressing ctrl+r.

Audio setup in WSL

If you run cecli from WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), /voice needs a little extra setup to reach your Windows microphone. WSLg bridges audio through PulseAudio, but sounddevice (via PortAudio) talks to ALSA, so we route ALSA through Pulse to WSLg’s RDPSource. On a native Linux or Windows install this isn’t needed.

1. Check the Windows mic. Verify your microphone is set as the default input device (Settings → System → Sound → Input) and that apps may access it (Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone).

2. Install PortAudio and the ALSA → Pulse plugin plus the PulseAudio utilities.

   • Fedora:

     sudo dnf install -y portaudio alsa-utils pulseaudio-utils alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
     

   • Debian / Ubuntu:

     sudo apt install -y libportaudio2 alsa-utils pulseaudio-utils libasound2-plugins
     

After installing PortAudio, close and reopen your terminal (or restart WSL) so
sounddevice picks up the newly installed PortAudio library — a running Python
process keeps whichever PortAudio it loaded first. Also make sure Windows grants
microphone access to WSLg (Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone →
allow desktop apps / “Windows Subsystem for Linux”).

3. Route ALSA through PulseAudio. Create ~/.asoundrc:

   printf 'pcm.!default { type pulse }\nctl.!default { type pulse }\n' > ~/.asoundrc
   

4. Verify the mic is captured (optional). Speak while this runs for a couple of seconds; an RMS well above 0 means WSLg is forwarding your mic:

   PULSE_SERVER=unix:/mnt/wslg/PulseServer \
   parec -d RDPSource --format=s16le --rate=44100 --channels=1 | \
     head -c 176400 | \
     python3 -c "import sys, numpy as np; a=np.frombuffer(sys.stdin.buffer.read(), np.int16)/32768.0; print('RMS', round(float(np.sqrt(np.mean(a**2))),4))"
   

Once this is in place, /voice records from your Windows microphone and transcribes it on-device with Moonshine AI’s models.