Can AI replace Superscribe?

01What it costs

Checked Aug 14, 2026 · source: superscribe.io.

Hidden costs: Business Voice's pooled call-minute quantity and overage treatment are not publicly disclosed. More than 10 seats moves to sales; Travel Pass also hides its included call-hour number.

02Could AI build it for you?

The core job: Bind a global hotkey, stream mic audio to a realtime STT API, run one LLM cleanup pass, and paste the result into whatever app has focus.

What a working version needs:

• macOS microphone + accessibility permissions
• streaming STT API key (ElevenLabs Scribe or Deepgram) or local whisper.cpp
• LLM API key for transcript cleanup
• Twilio account, a number, and an iOS device if you attempt the call-capture half

Half of it is a superwhisper-shaped yes; the existing-number phone rail drags the whole product to kinda.

03What you'd give up

They pay for the phone rail (answer calls normally on the number they already have, no bot, no second device) and for everything downstream arriving pre-filed: transcripts semantically matched to the right client and project using their own GitHub activity as context, then turned into searchable history, invoices, and CRM drafts.

05The build prompt

Paste this into an AI coding tool (such as Claude, ChatGPT, Lovable or Replit) to build your own version.

Build me a push-to-talk dictation tool for macOS to replace Superscribe's desktop app.
Requirements:

- Swift menu bar app, SPM only, no Xcode project. A global hotkey (default: hold
  Option+Space) records while held, stops on release.
- Capture the mic with AVAudioEngine, downsample to 16kHz mono PCM, and stream it
  over WebSocket to ElevenLabs Scribe realtime (key in .env). Show partial
  transcripts in a small floating panel while I speak.
- On release, run one LLM cleanup pass over the final transcript (fix punctuation,
  drop filler words; key in the same .env), then paste it into the focused app via
  NSPasteboard + CGEvent Cmd-V and restore my previous clipboard afterwards.
- Fallback: with no ElevenLabs key, record to a temp wav and transcribe locally
  with whisper.cpp instead. Slower is fine.
- Menu bar icon shows idle/recording/transcribing states; a history window lists
  the last 20 transcripts with copy buttons, persisted to ~/Dictation/history.jsonl.
- Ad-hoc codesign for my own machine only. README documents the Microphone and
  Accessibility permission prompts and the whisper.cpp model download.
- Out of scope: live word-by-word typing into the field (paste on release only),
  Windows support, accounts and billing, and the phone-call capture product. If I
  want call notes I will upload recordings by hand.

06Open-source starting points

• Handy: MIT cross-platform push-to-talk dictation app in Tauri, built to be forked; covers the whole desktop core loop.
• VoiceInk: GPL native Swift macOS dictation app with local whisper.cpp and per-app modes; closest open clone of the mac side.
• FreeFlow: Solo-built open Wispr Flow clone; working example of cloud STT plus LLM cleanup with active-window context.
• Twilio Media Streams: Official docs and tutorials for streaming live call audio to STT; the happy path of the call-capture half.