Documentation / Better text

Cleaning up text with your own AI provider and key

With a licence, an AI of your choice tidies each dictation: punctuation, capitals, no “uh” and no repeats. You use your own account, so your text goes straight from your computer to that service.

What it does, and what it does not

The AI step only corrects. It never rewrites what you said and never answers a question you dictate. SayFeather also checks that the answer looks like a correction of what you said, and inserts the text as heard if it does not. “uhm I’ll be uh late” becomes “I’ll be late.”

SayFeather does not see your text and does not pay for the AI. You pay your provider for what you use, if it charges at all.

Setting it up

1
Get a key from your provider
Create an account with a provider and make an API key there.
2
Open AI in Settings
Choose the Service: Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Groq, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio or another address that speaks the OpenAI format.
3
Paste the key and save it
Paste it under API key and choose Save. It is kept in the key store of your system (the keychain on a Mac), not in SayFeather, and is never shown again. Ollama and LM Studio run on your own computer and need no key unless your server asks for one.
4
Pick a model and try it
Choose a Model from the list the service gives, or type its name. Then press Try it: SayFeather cleans up a sample sentence and shows how long it took.

Choosing a model

A small, fast model keeps dictation quick, usually under a second. A larger one corrects better, but you wait longer and it costs more. SayFeather suggests Claude Haiku 5.5 for Anthropic, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite for Gemini and Mistral Small for Mistral. For the others you pick from the list.

With a model on your own computer, such as Ollama, nothing leaves your computer at all: not your voice and not your text.

Without a licence, or when it fails

You can set everything up without a licence, but the clean-up only runs with one. Without it SayFeather inserts the text as it was heard. If the AI cannot be reached, is out of credit or is too slow, SayFeather also inserts the text as heard and the recording bar tells you why. You never lose a dictation. See When the clean-up does not happen.

On Android the same settings are under AI for clean-up in the app.

Stuck? Email [email protected].