vibe

Vibe is another desktop transcription app built on Whisper, and what sets it apart is how much it does after the transcript. Everything runs locally, it handles almost every language with translation to English, and it exports to more formats than most people will ever need: SRT, VTT, TXT, HTML, PDF, JSON, and DOCX. MIT licensed, completely free.

It is built on whisper.cpp, the C++ port of Whisper, which tends to be lighter on resources than the Python original. You get batch transcription, speaker identification, microphone and system-audio recording, and a command-line interface plus an HTTP API for wiring it into other tools. The standout feature is AI summaries: point it at Claude or a local Ollama model and it condenses a transcript for you.

Solo and small teams: it is a free download on macOS, Windows, and Linux, with mobile on the way. If buzz is the no-frills on-ramp, vibe is for people who want the transcript to feed straight into a workflow. The export options and the HTTP API are the reason to pick it.

The catch is that the AI summary feature leans on an outside model, so the local-only promise holds for transcription but not for summaries unless you run Ollama yourself. And like every Whisper wrapper, accuracy is only as good as the model and the hardware you give it.