New v0.4.0 — Speaker diarization, AI transcripts, custom hotkeys, and more. See what's new →

For AI agents

The local STT layer
for your Apple Silicon AI agent.

macparakeet-cli is a Swift-native command-line interface to Parakeet TDT running on the Apple Neural Engine. ~155× realtime, ~2.5% WER, ~66 MB memory per inference slot. Free, GPL-3.0, and entirely local.

Read the integration guide → GitHub

Why MacParakeet for agents

ANE-accelerated, not cloud-dependent

Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 runs on the Apple Neural Engine via CoreML. ~155× realtime, ~66 MB working memory per slot. Whisper.cpp without ANE is measurably slower; the OpenAI Whisper API breaks the local-first posture and costs per minute.

Persistent SQLite memory layer

Every transcription lands in ~/Library/Application Support/MacParakeet/macparakeet.db. Your agent can search prior dictations, transcriptions, and prompt outputs without re-transcribing anything.

JSON output everywhere

Every read-only command supports --json with a stable schema (semver, see CHANGELOG). ISO-8601 datetimes, sorted keys. No fragile output parsing.

No cloud STT, ever

Speech-to-text and database access never touch the network. The only egress paths are YouTube downloads (yt-dlp), optional cloud LLM calls (only when you configure them), and Sparkle update checks (the app, not the CLI).

Install

Today

The CLI ships inside the macOS app bundle. Download MacParakeet, then symlink the binary onto your $PATH: 

ln -s /Applications/MacParakeet.app/Contents/MacOS/macparakeet-cli \
      /usr/local/bin/macparakeet-cli

macparakeet-cli --version   # 1.0.0
macparakeet-cli health --json

On the roadmap

Standalone Homebrew install, no .app required: 

brew install moona3k/tap/macparakeet-cli

Coming this week. Track progress in the canonical CLI plan.

The agent vocabulary

Every command supports --json output with a stable schema. Lookup arguments accept full UUID, UUID prefix (≥ 4 chars), or case-insensitive name.

Health probe (run at agent init)

macparakeet-cli health --json

Transcribe a file

macparakeet-cli transcribe /path/to/audio.mp3 --format json

Transcribe a YouTube URL

macparakeet-cli transcribe "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..." --format json

Search past transcriptions

macparakeet-cli history transcriptions --json
macparakeet-cli history search-transcriptions "design review" --json

Search past dictations

macparakeet-cli history dictations --json
macparakeet-cli history search "what did I say about" --json

Run a prompt against a transcription

macparakeet-cli prompts list --json
macparakeet-cli prompts run "Action items" \
  --transcription <id-or-prefix> \
  --provider anthropic --api-key "$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" \
  --model claude-sonnet-4-6

Per-ecosystem entry points

OpenClaw

Skill scaffold for OpenClaw agents — install, capabilities table, JSON conventions. Adapt to your ClawHub submission.

Read the scaffold →

Hermes Agent

Skill scaffold for Hermes Agent (Nous Research) — install plus an illustrative skill-manifest sketch with when_to_use triggers.

Read the README →

Codex CLI · Claude Code · generic AGENTS.md

For coding agents working in the MacParakeet repo, read AGENTS.md at the repo root. The cross-agent convention: build commands, code style, security & privacy notes.

AGENTS.md →

Privacy posture

Build something with it

File an issue with the integration label if you want to ship a new ecosystem adapter, or open a PR against /integrations.

Open an issue → CLI compatibility policy