Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

The demo seemed to struggle a bit with my accent (Scottish), getting quite a few words wrong - for example, every time I said "test" it would write "taste". Is this something you can improve going forward?

Congrats on the launch!

I absolutely love the idea, as a fellow neurodivergent who works much better over voice than text. My only feedback is... I'd love to run this with more control. I already run LLMs locally (LM Studio), and I can run something like whisper too. I understand that open-sourcing (or even making the source code available) might go against any commercialization attempt. However, there are some options (Red Hat-esque) where it may be possible to charge for business use and allow local running for free for personal use.

On one hand you've got a solid first-mover advantage in a field where lots can benefit and use this, however if someone can bork together several layers of LLM output they might be able to offer competition (and such projects are often opensource, albeit sometimes less "polished".) If you offer a good deal you might have a good chance of major success. Best of luck!

Congratulations! This is really cool. Maybe your website could just load into the demo? Have a talking avatar that looks like a paperclip with googly eyes to explain how to use it...

edit: I refreshed and then it did load with the blue mic button

First impression: Wow, this is awesome.

So let's say I work in a quiet home office by myself. Could I just have Aqua open throughout the day and give it notes / to-dos without having to click the microphone on/off each time?

I developed an RSI-related injury back in 94/95 and have been using speech recognition ever since. I would love a solution that would let me move off of Windows. I would love a solution allowing me to easily dictate text areas in Firefox, Thunderbird, or VS code. Most important, however, would be the ability to edit/manipulate the text using what Nuance used to call Select-and-Say. The ability to do minor edits, replace sentences with new dictation, etc., is so powerful and makes speech much easier to use than straight captured dictation like most whisper apps. If you can do that, I will be a lifelong customer.

The next most important thing would be the ability to write action routines for grammar. My preference is for Python because it's the easiest target when using chatGPT to write code. However, I could probably learn to live with other languages (except JavaScript, which I hate). I refer you to Joel Gould's "natPython" package he wrote for NaturallySpeaking. Here's the original presentation that people built on. https://slideplayer.com/slide/5924729/

Here's a lesson from the past. In the early days of DragonDictate/NaturallySpeaking, when the Bakers ran Dragon Systems, they regularly had employees drop into the local speech recognition user group meetings and talk to us about what worked for us and what failed. They knew that watching us Crips would give them more information about how to build a good speech recognition environment than almost any other user community. We found the corner cases before anybody else. They did some nice things, such as supporting a couple of speech recognition user group conferences with space and employee time.

It seems like nuance has forgotten those lessons.

Anyway, I was planning on getting work done today, but your announcement shoots that in the head. :-)

[edit] Freaking impressive. It is clear that I should spend more time on this. I can see how my experience of Naturally Speaking limited my view, and you have a much wider view of what the user interface could be.