{"slug": "whistle", "name": "Whistle", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 2, "warners": 0, "score": 1.183, "rising": 1.0, "first": "2026-10-08", "latest": "2026-10-09", "why": "Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Whistle"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800378096, "item_id": 50023631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023631", "by": "andai", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far.", "excerpt": "I made a little gui for it. (Or rather, ported my little voice typing gui to use Whistle/Needle instead of Parakeet. Only had to change like 2 lines!) https://gist.github.com/a-n-d-a-i/56ac707eacd8144f83d3651be43b47ef Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far. I use it on Linux. I think it's cross platform but I haven't tested it. Would love to know! Should be trivial (2 mins of Codex) t", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "voice typing speech-to-text", "switched_from": "Parakeet", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "andai", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023631", "date": "2026-10-09"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["voice typing speech-to-text", "local speech recognition on echo show"], "compared": [{"slug": "parakeet", "name": "Parakeet", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50008427", "title": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800378096, "item_id": 50023631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023631", "by": "andai", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far.", "excerpt": "I made a little gui for it. (Or rather, ported my little voice typing gui to use Whistle/Needle instead of Parakeet. Only had to change like 2 lines!) https://gist.github.com/a-n-d-a-i/56ac707eacd8144f83d3651be43b47ef Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far. I use it on Linux. I think it's cross platform but I haven't tested it. Would love to know! Should be trivial (2 mins of Codex) t", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "voice typing speech-to-text", "switched_from": "Parakeet", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}, {"id": 800186128, "item_id": 50011633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50011633", "by": "skolos", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Compared to that, whistle was really bad (out of 170 messages, qwen recognized correctly 168, whistle - 70)", "excerpt": "Interesting that this is here. I used whistle (and bunch of other things) to take ownership of my echo show. It now doesn't dial to Amazon at all - it does all processing locally with its own CPU and connects to my homeassistant for home automation. My initial setup involved qwen asr (1.7b model) running on rtx 5080. Compared to that, whistle was really bad (out of 170 messages, qwen recognized correctly 168, whistle", "context": "has a heavy accent", "use_case": "local speech recognition on Echo Show", "switched_from": "", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}]}