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CLI

Echophrase ships a small command-line binary alongside the desktop app, named echophrase. It gives you terminal access to microphone recording and audio transcoding without opening the app window, plus an MCP server mode so AI agents like Claude Code can drive voice capture directly.

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Where to find it

The CLI installs together with the desktop app; there is nothing separate to download. On the same machine as the desktop app, run:
If the binary is not on your PATH, look for it next to the installed app, or build it yourself from the cli/ folder of the Echophrase source.

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Commands

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What each command needs

Work standalone, no app or account required:
  • record / stop / status: capture the microphone in the background and write a WAV file to disk. Free.
  • transcode: normalizes an existing WAV file to the 16 kHz mono format the transcription pipeline expects. Free, works fully offline.
Requires the desktop app and a Pro subscription:
  • transcribe: sends a WAV file to the already-running desktop app over a localhost-only connection and prints back the transcript. This needs:
    1. The Echophrase desktop app running
    2. The MCP Server toggle enabled in Settings (off by default, Pro-gated)
    3. An active Pro subscription
    If the app is not running, transcribe exits with: The Echophrase desktop app must be running to transcribe. Start the app and try again.

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Quick examples

Every command has its own detailed help, for example echophrase record --help.

MCP Server

Use these same commands as tools from Claude Code and other AI agents.
For the full flag-by-flag reference (background vs foreground recording, device selection, recovering a stuck session, and more), see the CLI README in the source repository.