Every release, on the record

The CPU-first Store release

• This build is live on the Microsoft Store: dictation runs on your CPU via NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3 by default - no graphics card required. Your NVIDIA GPU, if you have one, is reserved for the AI text studio.
• Humming, coughs, and background noise no longer turn into stray filler words: every Parakeet chunk now passes a speech gate before decoding, and filler-only output is dropped at the source.
• New first-run journey: you land on the Models hub, one guided Parakeet download, then straight to Record. If an NVIDIA GPU is detected, AI polish offers to set itself up too; if not, setup stays minimal on purpose.
• Mini Mode's live-dictation glow now switches off the moment focus leaves a real text field - clicking the desktop, the taskbar, or another app clears it correctly.
• The engine chip and the speed stat now name the engine and device actually running - no more "GPU" label on a CPU transcription.
• Legal docs updated to v2.1 for the CPU-first architecture.

The hybrid pivot

• New default dictation engine: NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (int8) running entirely on your CPU cores, so dictation no longer needs a graphics card at all. On our published real-clip benchmark it wins outright on fast natural speech (2.0 vs 3.1 percent word error rate) and is the strongest no-GPU option we measured, while Whisper large-v3 on a GPU still leads overall (7.8 vs 11.9 percent) and ships for anyone who has the hardware - see voxmelt.com/benchmark.
• The GPU's new job is AI: with dictation off the card, your Ollama model stays warm in VRAM for instant rewrites, summaries, and translations. No more model juggling on 12 GB cards.
• Parakeet tuning for real dictation: boundary silence pads stop edge-word clipping, a CPU thread cap keeps the system smooth while you speak, and the refined pass budgets itself for TDT's attention cost.
• Whisper is still in the app for what Parakeet cannot do: ~100 languages and the GPU accuracy king, one toggle away.
• 1.18.1-1.18.7 follow-ups: the Models page became the single model-config hub with a CPU | GPU split, a live microphone test card, a slimmer first-run wizard, and Ollama detection + Mini Mode fixes.

The Store certification grind

• Voxmelt entered the Microsoft Store: a full MSIX channel with Store-managed updates, built from the same codebase as the auto-updating EXE.
• First crack in the GPU wall: with no NVIDIA GPU present, transcription now falls back to a bundled CPU model instead of refusing to run.
• A long tail of container hardening: model downloads inside the MSIX sandbox, long-path handling, engine load watchdogs, and crisp unplated taskbar icons.

The 5 MB installer

• The heavy CUDA engines moved out of the installer and now download on first run, resumable - the installer itself dropped to a few megabytes.
• Free tier doubled: 30 to 60 minutes of dictation per day.
• Read Aloud stability fixes, per-module onboarding tour, chunk-processing indicator, and friendlier limit messages.

One codebase, two channels

• Dual-channel builds: the auto-updating EXE and the Microsoft Store MSIX now come from the same source, with the app detecting its own channel at runtime.
• Self-contained Python sidecars - no system Python, no PATH surprises.

Brain Capsule

• Every built-in template is now compiled on-device by a three-layer prompt engine (action / format / style) living in the compiled Rust backend. Small local models stopped collapsing instructions, and the recipes never leave the app.

• Voiceover grew a persona x tone voice matrix with curated delivery tones.
• Compose and Record now pick Template and Tone independently, matching how you actually think about output.

Compose / Voiceover split

• Compose and Voiceover became their own full surfaces, with the template ladder v2 and a tone-first picker.
• 1.10.1: an on-canvas "Get started" guide walks new users to their first template, model, and recording after setup.

The IA overhaul

• Navigation reorganized around intent: Record is only for recording, configuration lives in Settings, and the AI Studio composer got its own home.
• Tone-shift chips and text-encoding fixes across the AI pipeline.

The voice suite

• TTS Read-Back: a local text-to-speech engine reads your polished text back - 32 voice combinations, WAV export, all offline.
• Voice Director: hands-free voice commands steer the pipeline while you dictate.

The stabilization release

• Language setting now fully honored end to end: Auto-detect runs Whisper language detection, and all 10 language choices apply on the next recording without an engine restart.
• Long dictations no longer risk a false "engine stuck" error: the final full-session accuracy pass now budgets itself against your GPU's measured speed and steps aside when the streaming transcript is already the right answer.
• Short utterances like a lone "Yes." are no longer swallowed by the hallucination filter - real speech energy now overrides the phantom-phrase list.
• Voice commands got a precision overhaul: saying "go" or "copy" alone no longer triggers "go ahead" or "copy that". Match threshold raised, partial matches now require most of the phrase.
• GPU safety on both sides: loading Whisper now checks free VRAM and evicts the AI model when the card is full, on cold start and resume alike. No more cryptic CUDA errors when a big model is pinned.
• Plan rebalance: the free tier now includes the flagship Casual Clean cleanup tone, Pro covers every everyday template with models up to 14B, and Studio owns the AI Prompt + Code packs plus the full 24B to 70B model garage.
• Switching AI models or toggling AI off mid-generation now cancels the run cleanly instead of leaving it wedged.

• Silent updates: per-user installs mean no UAC prompt on first install or any auto-update from here on.
• Keep-both is now the default GPU mode - Whisper and your AI model stay warm together, and the models panel mirrors what is actually resident in VRAM.
• Refreshed installer wizard art and branding.

• Theme parity with voxmelt.com: five dark themes including Candy Red and Mono, each with a matching titlebar logo.
• Re-rendered the full icon set natively at every size - crisp from the taskbar to the Store tile.

• Rebindable global hotkeys: trigger recording from any app, with defaults chosen to never steal system-wide combos.

• Mini Mode now mirrors the main window's recording state perfectly across monitors.
• Closing to tray keeps voice commands listening when Mini Mode is active - "go ahead" works with the main window hidden.

• The Mini Mode pill now runs its own audio analyser, so its mic animation matches the main record button frame for frame.

• App-wide zoom: Ctrl + mouse wheel or Ctrl +/- /0, from 50% to 200%, with a momentary zoom HUD.
• Visual polish pass: refreshed call-to-action buttons and consistent plan badge colors everywhere.

• AI stall watchdog: a generation that stops producing tokens is auto-recovered with a retryable error instead of hanging on "Processing".
• Accuracy stack tuning: chunk-overlap dedup, repetition collapse, and the hallucination filter now work as one contract.

• Honest tokens-per-second: AI speed now reports pure generation rate, with model load time shown separately.
• Eliminated up to two hidden model reloads before the first token in the auto-process path.

GPU-only, guaranteed

• New invariant: Voxmelt never runs a model partially on the CPU. Every load path now checks the fit before a single byte hits VRAM, and over-budget models get a clear popup instead of a 2 tok/s crawl.
• Smart swap: when Whisper must yield to a big AI model, it suspends in place and resumes in 2 to 3 seconds instead of paying a full cold start.
• Co-residency warmup: the AI model starts loading during the final transcription pass, so cleanup begins the instant your transcript is ready.

• Fixed: switching the Whisper model size in settings now actually loads the new model on your next recording.

• VRAM numbers you can trust: one source of truth for every model footprint, corrected by real measurements from your own card after first load.
• New int8_float16 precision option: half the Whisper VRAM with near-identical accuracy, for running both engines on tighter cards.

The model garage

• Curated AI model catalog from 3B to 70B: Gemma, Qwen, Llama, DeepSeek R1, Mistral, and MoE flagships, each with measured VRAM and strengths.
• The picker filters to what your card can actually run, and downloads stream in-app with live progress.

No-Hands Mode

• Voice commands: start, stop, copy, clear, and load or unload models entirely by voice, powered by an always-on tiny model that coexists with the main engine.
• Mini Mode: an always-on-top pill with live waveform, perfect for dictating into another app on a second monitor.

The template library

• AI templates organized by persona: Voice Polisher, Ghostwriter, Data Architect, Polyglot, and more, with multiple tones per template.
• Custom templates: write your own system prompt, pick a persona, and it runs 100% on your GPU like every built-in.
• Template discovery page with search and per-tone live samples.

Free for everyone, fairly

• Freemium launch: 15-day full trial of everything, then a free tier that stays genuinely useful - no card required.
• Pro and Studio subscriptions via Razorpay, with cryptographically signed entitlements verified in compiled code.
• Trial is anchored to your device, so a reinstall picks up where it left off.

• Accounts: email + password and one-click Google sign-in, used only to manage a paid license. Recording never requires an account.
• Session history: every dictation saved locally, searchable, with optional AI output alongside.

• The second brain: local AI post-processing through Ollama - cleanup, summarize, reformat - streamed token by token, on the same GPU.
• Dark theme system with live accent switching.

• System tray with close-to-tray: the X button hides the window and keeps your hotkey armed and models warm.
• Branded installer, mic permission handled silently.

• Zero-terminal first-run wizard: Ollama, Whisper, and your first AI model installed with clicks, not commands.
• Clear, actionable errors for driver and CUDA version issues.

First public build

• Whisper large-v3 dictation on your own NVIDIA GPU: press record, speak, get text in near real time.
• Continuous dictation with overlapping chunks and boundary dedup for unlimited session length.
• Global hotkey with auto-copy and auto-paste into whatever app has focus.
• Zero cloud calls, zero telemetry, works with the network cable unplugged. The whole point, from day one.