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dictation-toolbox
Caster
Python2020–2022
dictation-toolbox / Caster

Caster

Dragonfly-Based Voice Programming and Accessibility Toolkit

5Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
362GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Dragonfly-Based Voice Programming and Accessibility Toolkit

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month8 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-06-16 21:23:39 UTC to 2022-07-04 19:42:47 UTC.

012342020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJun 20202020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsJun 20212021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJul 2022

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Jun 20202020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jul 20202020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Aug 20202020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20202020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20202020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20202020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20202020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20212021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20212021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20212021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20212021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20212021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20212021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20212021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20212021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20212021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20212021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20212021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC413
Feb 20222022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20222022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20222022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20222022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20222022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20222022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

8 sources
I have been coding entirely by voice for approximately 10 years now (by hand long before that). Most of that time I have been using the Dragonfly (https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly) library to construct my own customized voice coding system. The library is highly flexible and open source, allowing you to easily customize everything to suit what you need to be productive. It is perhaps the power user analogue to Dragon Naturally Speaking. With it, you can certainly be highly productive coding by voice. However, it does require work to setup and customize to suit you, so it isn't really for the "general population" of computer users to just sit down and use. With regard to accuracy of speech recognition, being open allows you to (with sufficient motivation) to train a custom acoustic speech model that recognizes your voice spec
Read the rest
ifically extremely well. Regarding the software packages you referenced: Yes, Dragon is trash that I want nothing to do with, because of its inefficient interface, its complete inability to accurately understand my voice, and its generally shoddy software quality. Voice Computer (which I hadn't seen before) is therefore eliminated as well, though it doesn't look terrible as a front end to Dragon to better use the OS GUI-accessibility info. Many people like Talon, but I demand something open, which I can modify to suit my needs. Background: I develop kaldi-active-grammar (https://github.com/daanzu/kaldi-active-grammar), a free and open source speech recognition backend usable by Dragonfly, itself entirely by voice. There's also a community of voice coders using Dragonfly and other tools that build on top of it, such as Caster (https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster).
In Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?
I have been coding entirely by voice for approximately 10 years now (by hand long before that). Most of that time I have been using the Dragonfly (https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly) library to construct my own customized voice coding system. The library is highly flexible and open source, allowing you to easily customize everything to suit what you need to be productive. It is perhaps the power user analogue to Dragon Naturally Speaking. With it, you can certainly be highly productive coding by voice. In fact, I develop kaldi-active-grammar (https://github.com/daanzu/kaldi-active-grammar), a free and open source speech recognition backend usable by Dragonfly, itself entirely by voice. There's also a community of voice coders using Dragonfly and other tools that build on top of it, such as Caster (https://github.com/dictation-
Read the rest
In Ask HN: Anyone voice code? I had a stroke and can't use my left side
Unfortunately Dragon development has mostly stalled for the last 5 years (Dragon 15 was a leap forward but that was quite some time ago now). You can still make use of it via Dragonfly (see also Caster[0]) as mentioned by a sibling comment or by using Talon[1] or Vocola. Having used a computer 90% hands free for about a year and a half back in 2019, I chose Dragonfly then, but would probably choose Talon nowadays - less futsing about and it has alternative speech engine options. I also recommend looking into eye tracking: the Tobii gaming products[2] work well for general computer mousing with some software like Talon or Precision Gaze[3] - well enough for me to make a hands free mod[4] for Factorio, for example. [0]: https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster [1]: https://talonvoice.com/ [2]: https://gaming.tobii.com/product/eye-tracker
Read the rest
In Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?
quite a few folks in the voice programing community supplement voice commands with eye tracking using dedicated hardware. Talon [1] is considered an excellent resource in that field and there are also people in the Caster/dragonfly[2] ecosystem using EyeXMouse [3] and wolfmanstout [4] also has some work worth checking out. [1] https://talonvoice.com/ [2] https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster [2] https://github.com/Versatilus/EyeXMouse [4] https://handsfreecoding.org/2014/11/16/getting-started-with-...
In Webgazer.js webcam eye tracking on the browser
Though unfortunately I cannot provide you with the conversational solution you are looking for, I believe there are some steps you can take/solutions that are currently available and that could help make your voice programming experience less exhausting, so it might be worth it if you gave them a try 1) try to minimize the amount you have to speak by leveraging auto completion as much as possible. For me TabNine [1] has been great help in that regard 2) try to use snippets as much as possible to reduce boilerplate code and because you can simply tab through the various fields. For me it has been great help that with sublime it is possible [2] without installing anything to have all of my snippets inside dragonfly grammars or even generate them dynamically [10] providing for much-needed structural control over what you write. I know this
Read the rest
is more primitive (at least for the time being, there are ideas to improve it) than what you are asking for but for me it has been enough to make C++ enjoyable again! unfortunately my pull request to integrate this into Caster [3] has fallen behind but all of the basic functionality along with various additional utilities is there if you want to give it a try. Just be aware of these little bugger [4] that applies here as well! 3) not directly related to code generation but if you find yourself spending a lot of time and vocal effort for navigation consider either adding eye tracking to the mix or utilizing one of the at least three project that provide syntactical navigation capabilities. As author and more importantly as a user of PythonVoiceCodingPlugin [5], I have seen quite a bit of difference since I got it up to speed, because a) even though it is command driven ,command sound natural and smooth b) though they can get longer ,in practice utterances are usually 3 to 5(maybe 6) words , which makes them long enough so that you do not to speak abruptly but short enough that you do not have to hurry to speak them before you run out of breath c) and yeah I personally need less commands compared to using only keyboard shortcuts so less load for your voice! The other two project in this area I am aware of are Serenade [6] and VoiceCodeIdea [7] so see if something fits your use case! 4) use noise input where you can to reduce voice strain. Talon [8][9] is by far the way to go in this field but you might be able to get inferior but decent results with other engines as well. For instance, DNS 15 Home can recognize some 30+ letter like "sounds" like "fffp,pppf, tttf,shhh,ssss/'s,shhp,pppt,xxxx,tttp,kkkp" , you just have to make sure that you use 4 or more letters in your grammar (so for instance ffp will not work). recognition accuracy is going to degrade if you overloaded too much but it is still good enough to simplify a lot of common tasks. 5) give it a try with a different engine, I was not really that much satisfiedwith WSR either 6) see if any of the advise from [11] helps and seek out professional help! I realize that my post diverges from what you originally asked for but I feel the points raised here might help you lessen the impact of voice strain for the time being until more robust solutions like the gpt3 mentioned in one of the comments above are up and running. My apologies if this is completely off topic! [1] https://www.tabnine.com/ [2] https://github.com/mpourmpoulis/CasterSublimeSnippetInterfac... [3] https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster [4] https://github.com/mpourmpoulis/PythonVoiceCodingPlugin/issu... [5] https://packagecontrol.io/packages/PythonVoiceCodingPlugin [6] https://serenade.ai/ [7] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/10504-voice-code-idea [8] https://talonvoice.com/ [9] https://noise.talonvoice.com/ [10] https://github.com/mpourmpoulis/CasterSublimeSnippetInterfac... [11] https://dictation-toolbox.github.io/dictation-toolbox.org/vo...
In Ask HN: Is there any work being done in speech-to-code with deep learning?

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