The four
There’s a fifth shortcut, the Chat Agent Hotkey, but it’s less confusable —
it opens a chat window rather than typing anywhere.
All five are set in one place: Settings → Hotkeys under App.
Dictation vs the voice agent
This is the pair that causes trouble, because both put text at your cursor and only one of them puts your text there. Dictation transcribes. Say “what time is the meeting tomorrow” and those six words are typed. The voice agent executes. Say the same thing and it answers the question — the app describes this shortcut as “Speak a request — your AI agent types the result, not your words.” There are two ways to reach the agent, which is why turning off one doesn’t always stop it:- Its hotkey. Everything you say after pressing it is an instruction.
- Its name. During ordinary dictation, starting with the agent’s name routes the whole thing to the agent instead.
Dictation vs cleanup
A subtler case: you dictated, you got your own words back, but they’re not exactly the words you said — punctuation you didn’t speak, filler words gone, a clumsy sentence tidied. That’s dictation cleanup, which runs on your transcript by default. It’s not the agent, and it isn’t meant to change your meaning. See dictation cleanup for what it does and how to turn it off.Working out which one ran
Ask what came back:- Your words, roughly as spoken — dictation, working normally.
- Your words, tidier — dictation with cleanup.
- An answer, a rewrite, or something you didn’t say — the voice agent.
- Another language — translation.
- Nothing at the cursor, a panel appeared — meeting mode or the chat agent.