Why dictate in Claude Code
Agents like Claude Code do their best work with a real brief: the goal, the constraints, the files, how to check the result. In a terminal, that brief is a wall of text typed into one line.
Talking through a task is how you’d explain it to a teammate anyway. Wisper turns that into a clean prompt and pastes it at the prompt — in Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp or the terminal inside your editor.
How to dictate in Claude Code with Wisper
- Install Wisper from the Mac App Store (macOS 14 Sonoma or later). Allow the microphone, and switch Wisper on under Accessibility so it can paste for you.
- Click into the agent’s prompt in your terminal.
- Hold right ⌥ Option (or Fn, or ⌥W — your choice) and talk the way you would to a person.
- Let go. Wisper pastes clean text where your cursor is.
- Wisper pastes the text and stops; it doesn’t press Enter. Read the prompt, then send it.
That’s the whole loop. For longer thoughts, double-tap the hotkey to go hands-free and tap again to stop. To change text you already wrote, select it, hold right ⌥ and say what to change — “shorter”, “friendlier”, “in Spanish”.
The style that fits: AI Prompt
AI Prompt turns a spoken brief into a structured instruction: goal, details, constraints. It’s the natural fit for an agent.
Some people prefer to give the agent their whole train of thought. For that, Default keeps your words and only removes the fillers.
“so before you change anything, um, read the payments module and tell me how refunds work, then, uh, propose a plan to add partial refunds, don’t touch the database schema yet”
Before changing anything, read the payments module and explain how refunds work. Then propose a plan to add partial refunds. Don’t change the database schema yet.
Press a style’s number key while you talk to switch styles before you let go. Free includes 5 style presets; Pro adds unlimited and custom styles.
Tips for Claude Code
Standing instructions as Snippets
Save the rules you repeat — “run the tests before you finish”, “no new dependencies” — as Snippets, and say the phrase at the end of a prompt.
Hands-free for long briefs
Double-tap the hotkey, walk through the task, tap to stop.
Same hotkey everywhere
The prompt you’d say to Claude Code works the same in Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor or a chat window.
Questions
Does Wisper work in Terminal and iTerm2?
Yes. Wisper pastes wherever your cursor is on your Mac, including terminal apps and the terminal inside VS Code or Cursor.
Will it press Enter and run something?
No. Wisper only pastes the text. Nothing runs until you press Enter.
Does it work with other coding agents?
Yes — Codex, Gemini CLI or any other tool that reads text from your terminal or a text box.