---
audience: power_user
summary: Talk; ScaiWave transcribes and lets you insert into the active note.
title: Voice-dictate into notes
path: tutorials/power-user/voice-dictate-into-notes
status: published
---

# Voice-dictate into notes

When typing is the wrong tool — walking, driving, brainstorming with
your hands free — dictate into ScaiWave.

## 1. Start recording

In the notes panel:

1. Open or create a note.
2. Click the **🎤 microphone** button below the editor (or the **Voice**
   panel header if it's collapsed).
3. Speak. The recorder shows a level meter and elapsed time.

The recorder uses your browser's `MediaRecorder` API. Permission is
asked once per origin; you can revoke from your browser's site
settings.

## 2. Stop and review

Click **Stop**. Three things happen:

1. The audio is uploaded to MinIO/S3 (transient — purged after
   processing).
2. The transcript is computed via ScaiGrid's speech-to-text model.
3. A **Confirm transcript** modal opens showing the text.

You can edit the transcript in the modal. If you said:

> "todo email alice the Q3 numbers high priority due Tuesday"

…the modal will show:

```markdown
- [ ] Email Alice the Q3 numbers !high 📅 2026-05-20
```

(The parser maps "high priority" → `!high`, "due Tuesday" → the
next Tuesday's date.)

## 3. Insert

- **Insert at cursor** — lands wherever the editor cursor was.
- **Append** — at the end of the note.
- **As todos only** — if the transcript was a list, only the
  checkbox lines are inserted (skips narrative).
- **Cancel** — discard.

## 4. Audio is preserved

The original audio recording is attached to the note (under **Audio**
in the note detail). Click to replay; download to keep a local copy.

This is useful for:

- Verifying you said what you meant.
- Long brainstorms where the transcript is a sketch and the audio
  has nuance.
- Compliance — having a primary source.

## 5. Bulk note creation

In the **Voice** panel, a recording can also become a *new note*
rather than insertion. Useful for walking-meeting capture:

1. Record for 5 minutes.
2. Modal shows the transcript.
3. Click **New note**. ScaiWave creates a note, prefills the
   transcript, and (with AI assist) suggests a title + tags.

## 6. AI follow-up

After dictating, ask the AI in the chat:

- *"Summarise the note I just recorded."*
- *"Extract action items from `[[Voice 2026-05-17]]` and add them
  as todos."*
- *"Clean up the transcript — remove ums and false starts."*

## Limits

- **Max recording length**: 30 minutes per file (chunked above).
- **Audio formats**: webm/opus (browsers), m4a (Safari), wav
  (fallback).
- **Transcription languages**: whatever ScaiGrid's speech model
  supports — typically the major locales. Pass a language hint via
  the panel's language picker if auto-detection picks wrong.

## Where to go next

- [Todos from notes](/docs/scaiwave/tutorials/power-user/todos-from-notes) — what happens after the bulk-add.
- API: [Media](/docs/scaiwave/reference/api/media-and-files) — programmatic upload + transcribe.