1. The voice agent
OpenWhispr has a voice agent: say its name and the rest of what you say is treated as an instruction to carry out, not words to type. The app’s own description is “When you say ‘Hey [agent name]’ followed by an instruction, the AI executes your command — composing content, formatting text, or answering questions — instead of transcribing.” So a dictation that begins with the agent’s name is routed to the agent. If your agent is called something ordinary, you can trigger it by accident just by saying that word. Where to check: Settings → Language Models under AI Models, then the Voice Agent tab. Enable voice agent turns it off entirely, and Agent Name is the word that triggers it.2. The Voice Agent hotkey
There’s a separate hotkey for the agent, described in the app as “Speak a request — your AI agent types the result, not your words.” If you used that shortcut instead of your dictation shortcut, you’ll get an answer every time. Turning off Enable voice agent disables this hotkey too — they’re the same feature — so if you’ve done that and still get answers, the cause is something else on this page, not the toggle. Where to check: Settings → Hotkeys under App. Compare Dictation Hotkey with Voice Agent Hotkey and make sure they’re not similar enough to hit the wrong one.3. Dictation cleanup
Separately from the agent, OpenWhispr can run your transcription through a language model to tidy it — punctuation, filler words, obvious mis-hearings. This is Dictation Cleanup, and it’s what makes text come out polished rather than verbatim. Cleanup shouldn’t answer questions. But it is the reason your words can come back reworded, and if you want the raw transcription this is the switch. Where to check: Settings → Language Models under AI Models, then the Dictation Cleanup tab.You can always see what was transcribed before any processing. In your
history, each item offers View raw transcript and Copy raw transcript.
Comparing the two tells you immediately whether the change happened during
transcription or afterwards.
If you turned the agent off and it still happens
That’s worth telling us about, and it’s the version of this we most want to see. Check in this order:1
Confirm which hotkey you pressed
Turning off Enable voice agent disables the Voice Agent hotkey too, so
if you’re still getting answers with the toggle off, double-check you
pressed the dictation hotkey and not the agent one.
2
Compare the raw transcript
If the raw transcript is your actual words and the final text is an answer,
something after transcription rewrote it. If the raw transcript is already
an answer, the request went to the agent.
3
Check any custom prompt
Agent-name detection itself runs directly against your transcript, before
any prompt is involved — see how naming it
works. The
placeholder warning in Prompt Studio is about something else: a custom
agent or cleanup prompt that drops the agent-name placeholder can still
behave unpredictably once the agent is triggered, so keep it if you’ve
edited that prompt.
4
Send us a debug log
It records which path the request took. That turns this from guesswork into
a single answer — see
how to send one.
FAQ
I want verbatim text, with no AI at all.
I want verbatim text, with no AI at all.
Turn off Dictation Cleanup and Enable voice agent, both under
Settings → Language Models under AI Models. Transcription then
gives you what you said.
Does the agent work on local models?
Does the agent work on local models?
Yes — the voice agent can run on OpenWhispr Cloud, your own API key, a local
model, a self-hosted endpoint, or an enterprise provider. The mode is chosen
on the Voice Agent tab.
Why does it happen only sometimes?
Why does it happen only sometimes?
Because the trigger is what you said. A dictation that happens to start with
the agent’s name is routed to the agent; one that doesn’t, isn’t.