Nothing here is a black box. This is the complete list of what ships in the archive, what each piece does, when it runs, and under which licence — including every model the catalogue offers.
Each is a separate executable next to the app. The program starts one when it is needed, talks to it over a loopback port, and stops it after ten idle minutes.
| Part | What it does here | When it runs | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| whisper.cpp | whisper-server.exe — runs the Whisper family of models and their translate-to-English mode. | While a Whisper model serves the language you are dictating in. | MIT |
| sherpa-onnx | sherpa-server.exe and sherpa-online-server.exe — everything that is not Whisper, in one pass or streaming as you speak. | While a sherpa model serves the language, or a streaming model is chosen. | Apache 2.0 |
| llama.cpp | llama-server.exe — the editor model that runs your prompts after recognition. | Only while post-processing is switched on. | MIT |
| ggml | The tensor maths inside whisper.cpp and llama.cpp. Not a separate file; compiled into both. | With the engine that uses it. | MIT |
| ONNX Runtime | Runs the models inside sherpa-onnx. Compiled into the sherpa executables. | With sherpa. | MIT |
The app is written in Go. These are the only outside libraries it uses.
| Part | What it does here | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| go-webview2 | Draws the settings window, which is an HTML page rendered by the WebView2 component already present in Windows. | MIT |
| go-winloader | Loads the WebView2 libraries. Used by go-webview2. | MIT |
| malgo / miniaudio | Captures the microphone: the audio callback that fills the buffer while you hold the keys. | Unlicense |
| gorilla/websocket | The websocket link to the streaming recogniser, which sends text back while you are still speaking. | BSD-2 |
| golang.org/x/sys | The Windows API calls: the keyboard hook, the tray icon, the overlay window, job objects for the child processes. | BSD-3 |
| IBM Plex | Sans for the Neon design and Mono for Terminal, both carried inside the executable so nothing is fetched at runtime. | OFL 1.1 |
| WebView2 Runtime | Part of Windows, not shipped by us. It is what actually paints the settings page. | Microsoft |
Models are downloaded on request, from the repositories below, and every file is compared against a published SHA-256 before it is used. None of them is bundled with the program.
| Model | What it is for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Whisper Base, Small, Medium, Turbo | The default choice for every language, and the only models that translate speech into English by themselves. Quantised builds are marked q5. | MIT |
| GigaAM v3 | A single-language model that punctuates by itself. On an 11-second phrase it took 0.47 s against Whisper Medium's 11.6 s, and 277 MB of memory against 814 MB. | MIT |
| GigaAM v2 | The previous generation of the same model: the same speed, without the punctuation. | MIT |
| Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 | 25 European languages in one narrow model, punctuates by itself. | CC-BY-4.0 |
| Nemotron 3.5 Streaming | Types as you speak: partial text on the plate, 40 languages, punctuation included. | OpenMDW-1.1 |
| Canary 180M Flash | English, German, Spanish and French, and it translates between them without Whisper. | CC-BY-4.0 |
| Qwen3 ASR | About 30 languages, the heaviest and the most accurate in the catalogue. | Apache 2.0 |
| Moonshine | Small and quick, for one language at a time on modest hardware. | MIT |
| Any GGUF editor model | Post-processing runs whatever GGUF model you point it at, searched and downloaded from Hugging Face inside the program. | per model |
The engines are ordinary HTTP and websocket servers bound to 127.0.0.1. They are not reachable from the network, and the program refuses to start one on a port another process already holds.
Both are equally welcome. The repository has the build recipe, the tests and every line of the program.
Open the repository
holdtotype