InkSpoke for writers and creators

For anyone who thinks faster than they type — novelists, bloggers, scriptwriters, journalists, newsletter authors, and content creators who want to get the draft out of their head and onto the page.

Profile

You write a lot, and the blank page is the enemy. Your best ideas arrive mid-sentence, while pacing the room or staring out the window — not while your fingers are pinned to a keyboard. You draft in bursts, revise in passes, and you care about voice: the rhythm and word choice that make the writing yours.

InkSpoke fits that rhythm. You hold a hotkey, speak a paragraph, and the words land in your editor, your CMS, your notes app, your script tool — whatever already has your cursor. No dictation window to write into and copy out of. When you want polish, AI refinement cleans up the spoken-word noise; when you want your exact words, you can keep them raw. Then you revise the same way you drafted: by talking to your selections.

What you'll get from InkSpoke

• Drafts that keep pace with your thinking. Speaking is two to three times faster than typing, and InkSpoke removes the friction between "having the sentence" and "seeing it on screen."
• Polish without losing your voice. Optional AI refinement strips the ums, false starts, and run-ons — and you decide, per workspace, how heavy or light a hand it uses.
• Revision by voice. Select any paragraph and speak an instruction — "tighten this," "make it more vivid" — and Command Mode rewrites the selection in place.
• A workspace that knows your craft. Teach InkSpoke your recurring character names, house style, and tone once; it applies them automatically when you're in your writing app.
• Write in more than one language. Dictate — or translate a passage — in the languages you work in.
• Private by default. Speech recognition runs on-device with the built-in model, so your unpublished manuscript never has to leave your machine unless you choose a cloud model.

Recommended setup

A grounded starting point. Everything here ships in the desktop app and can be tuned later.

Models

Choice	Recommendation	Why
Speech model	Start on the built-in Whisper Small (on-device, free)	Fully offline and private — ideal for unpublished work. Move to a larger on-device model or a cloud model in Settings → AI Models if you need extra accuracy on unusual vocabulary.
Text model	Keep the default active text model	Powers AI refinement and Command Mode. You can pin a specific text model to your writing workspace later.

See Models and providers for the full picture of on-device vs. cloud.

Key settings

Setting	Default	Why it matters for you
AI Refinement	On	Polishes spoken drafts. Toggle it off any time with Alt+Shift+R (⌥+⇧+R on macOS) when you want raw, unedited words.
Dictation Mode	Standard	Standard transcribes in one accurate pass after you stop. Switch to Live Preview in Settings → Audio if you like watching the transcript build as you speak (on-device speech only).
Auto-detect language	On	Lets you switch languages mid-project without changing a setting.
Personal dictionary	On	Add character names, place names, and invented words so "Aeryn" never comes back as "Erin." See Personal context and dictionaries.
Max recording duration	5 minutes (300 s)	The per-take safety cap. For long, unbroken passages, raise it — or set it to 0 for no limit — in the audio settings.

Your writing workspace

The single highest-leverage setup step is a workspace for your writing. Open Settings → Workspaces → create workspace and use the guided wizard:

1. Purpose → Creative Writing. This seeds a tone and an output-style entry suited to prose (not, say, terse email). (If your work is reportage or marketing copy, the wizard also offers Documentation, Social Media, and other purposes.)
2. Domain → pick the closest match — for example Journalism, Marketing, or Education — to add relevant context and vocabulary. Skip it if none fit.
3. Activation → point the workspace at the apps you write in (your editor, Google Docs in the browser, your CMS) so it applies itself automatically, and pin it while you're in a long session.

Once created, open the workspace and add Knowledge Entries — the four categories are Tone Adjustment, Output Style, Domain Context, and Custom Instruction. This is where you protect your voice (see the tip below).

Keep your voice with a Custom Instruction

Refinement's job is to clean up spoken-word artifacts — filler, repetition, punctuation — not to rewrite you. If you ever feel it's over-editing, add a Custom Instruction entry to your workspace such as "Preserve my exact wording and sentence rhythm; only fix grammar, punctuation, and obvious filler." Prefer nothing touched at all? Turn refinement off and your raw transcription is injected verbatim.

Essential features

Five features do most of the work for a writer. Learn these first.

1. Push-to-talk dictation — press Alt+Space (⌥+Space on macOS), speak, press again to finish. The text lands at your cursor in whatever app is focused.
2. App-aware AI refinement — cleans up spoken drafts and adapts tone to the app you're in, using the tone and output-style rules in your workspace.
3. Command Mode — select any text and speak an instruction to rewrite it in place. Your revision pass, hands-free.
4. Workspaces — bundle your vocabulary, tone, and style so InkSpoke writes like you the moment you're in your writing app.
5. Multi-language dictation — draft or translate across the languages you work in, switchable right from the listening overlay.
6. Personal context and dictionaries — teach InkSpoke the proper nouns and made-up words that generic models always mangle.

Here's the listening overlay you'll see every time you dictate — with your workspace and language right there for the session:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ●  Listening…                                  0:12   │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   ▁▃▅▇▆▄▂▄▆▇▅▃▁▂  "she stood at the edge of the…"      │
│                                                        │
│   [ Creative Writing ▾ ]   [ EN ▾ ]          [ Send ]  │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│   ESC cancel · Alt+Space finish                        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Example workflows

1. Draft a scene or blog post, hands-free

You're drafting into your editor and the ideas are flowing.

1. Put your cursor where the next paragraph goes.
2. Press Alt+Space (⌥+Space on macOS). The overlay shows your Creative Writing workspace is active.
3. Speak the paragraph the way you'd say it aloud — don't worry about the ums or restarts.
4. Press the hotkey again (or click Send). InkSpoke transcribes on-device, refines with your workspace's tone, and injects the clean paragraph.
5. Repeat for the next paragraph. You're writing at speaking speed.

Dictate in natural chunks

A paragraph or two per take keeps accuracy high and gives you natural save points. For a long unbroken passage, raise (or disable) the max-recording cap in Settings → Audio first.

2. Revise a passage by talking to it

The draft exists; now you're sharpening it.

1. In your editor, select the sentence or paragraph you want to change.
2. Press the Command Mode hotkey, Alt+Shift+C (⌥+⇧+C on macOS). The listening overlay appears.
3. Speak the instruction — for example "tighten this by a third," "make the imagery more concrete," or "fix the grammar but keep my wording."
4. InkSpoke replaces the selection with the rewrite. If anything goes wrong, your original selection is left untouched — you never lose text.

3. Write across languages

Working bilingually, or translating a line for a character?

• Dictate in another language: open the language picker on the overlay (or cycle it with the arrow keys) and speak. With auto-detect on, InkSpoke follows along.
• Translate a passage in place: select the text, press Alt+Shift+C (⌥+⇧+C), and say "translate this to French." The translation replaces the selection.

If English isn't your first language, the non-native English speakers guide has more.

Pro tips

• Raw first, polish later. For a messy discovery draft, toggle refinement off (Alt+Shift+R / ⌥+⇧+R) to capture your exact words. Then use Command Mode on the passages that need shaping.
• Protect proper nouns. Add every recurring character, place, and invented term to your personal dictionary so they're spelled right every time — no more find-and-replace after the fact.
• Pin your workspace for a writing sprint. Pinning your Creative Writing workspace guarantees it's applied no matter which window you tab into. When you're done, unpin to let smart matching take over again.
• Re-polish without re-recording. Not happy with how a passage came out? Open Settings → History, find that dictation, and reprocess it with a different text model or workspace. See History and diagnostics.
• Keep names off the cloud, keep speed on-device. Whisper Small runs entirely on your machine, which is exactly what you want while a manuscript is unpublished.

Long sessions on the free trial

InkSpoke's Pro trial includes an audio allowance rather than an unlimited clock, so marathon drafting sessions can reach the cap. See the free trial for what's included.

Next steps

• Polish your writing with AI — a hands-on walkthrough of refinement.
• Build a workspace for your domain — set up the writing workspace end to end.
• Command Mode — the full guide to rewriting selections by voice.
• Your first dictation — if you haven't sent your first words yet, start here.