lel

X11 transcription daemon that records audio and runs Whisper, logging the transcript.

Requirements

• X11 (not Wayland)
• ffmpeg
• whisper (OpenAI Whisper CLI)
• xclip
• Tray icon deps: libappindicator3 and gtk3 (required by systray)

Build

go build -o leld ./cmd/leld
go build -o lelctl ./cmd/lelctl

Config

Create ~/.config/lel/config.toml:

hotkey = "Cmd+m"
ffmpeg_input = "pulse:default"
whisper_model = "base"
whisper_lang = "en"
whisper_device = "cpu"
whisper_extra_args = ""
record_timeout_sec = 120
whisper_timeout_sec = 300
segment_sec = 5
streaming = false

Env overrides:

• WHISPER_MODEL, WHISPER_LANG, WHISPER_DEVICE, WHISPER_EXTRA_ARGS
• WHISPER_FFMPEG_IN
• WHISPER_STREAM, WHISPER_SEGMENT_SEC, WHISPER_TIMEOUT_SEC
• LEL_RECORD_TIMEOUT_SEC, LEL_HOTKEY

Run manually

./leld --config ~/.config/lel/config.toml

Disable the tray icon:

./leld --no-tray

systemd user service

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp leld lelctl ~/.local/bin/
cp systemd/lel.service ~/.config/systemd/user/lel.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now lel

Usage

• Press the hotkey once to start recording.
• Press it again to stop and transcribe.
• The transcript is logged to stderr.

Control:

lelctl status
lelctl reload
lelctl stop