murmur

System-wide dictation for macOS. A small Swift speech daemon (native/speechd, Apple Speech / SFSpeechRecognizer) over a local loopback API, spawned and managed by an Electron + React desktop app — one self-contained package, no separate service to run by hand. Speak, and the transcript lands wherever your cursor is.

Electron shell built on an Electron + React + Vite template: renderer and main process talk through a strongly typed window.desktopBridge defined once in packages/contracts.

Layout

apps/
  desktop/       Electron main + preload (tsdown -> dist-electron/*.cjs)
                 spawns/kills native/speechd on startup/quit (speechd-manager.ts)
  web/           Vite + React renderer (also runnable as a standalone web app)
packages/
  contracts/     Shared DesktopBridge interface + IPC channel constants
native/
  speechd/       Swift package — Apple Speech + AVAudioEngine behind a
                 loopback HTTP API (127.0.0.1:8722)

Develop

bun install
bun run speechd:build   # builds native/speechd once (debug)
bun run dev

This starts Vite on http://localhost:5173 and Electron, which loads the dev server and spawns native/speechd's debug binary as a child process (see apps/desktop/src/speechd-manager.ts). Edit web code and HMR works; edit desktop or Swift code and restart bun run dev to pick it up.

Tap Option anywhere to start/stop dictation; the transcript is pasted into whatever app is frontmost. Requires Accessibility (global Option-tap listener + paste keystroke), Microphone, and Speech Recognition permissions — macOS prompts for each on first run.

Build

bun run build   # builds web -> apps/web/dist and desktop -> apps/desktop/dist-electron
bun run start   # runs the built Electron app against the built renderer

Package (installer)

bun run package   # builds native/speechd in release mode, then the app + DMG

bun run package builds native/speechd in release first (speechd:build:release), then the web/desktop bundles, then hands off to electron-builder — the compiled speechd binary is embedded as an extraResource (apps/desktop/electron-builder.config.cjs) so the packaged .app is self-contained. Output lands in apps/desktop/release/.

Stack

• Renderer: Vite 5, React 19, TanStack Router (file-based routing in apps/web/src/routes/), Tailwind v4 (@tailwindcss/vite).
• Main: Electron 33, bundled with tsdown to CJS in dist-electron/.
• Contract: shared DesktopBridge interface in packages/contracts.
• Packaging: electron-builder; bundles native/speechd's release binary as an extraResource.
• Speech backend: native/speechd (Swift package), Apple Speech framework over a loopback HTTP API — spawned as a child process by apps/desktop/src/speechd-manager.ts.

Adding an IPC method

1. Add the method to DesktopBridge and add a channel constant in packages/contracts/src/index.ts.
2. Expose it in apps/desktop/src/preload.ts (one line forwarding to ipcRenderer.invoke).
3. Handle it in apps/desktop/src/ipc/handlers.ts with ipcMain.handle(CHANNEL, ...).
4. Call it from the renderer via window.desktopBridge.yourMethod(...).

The interface is the contract — TypeScript will tell you if any of the four sides drifts.