Introducing Custom Vocabulary: Teach Whiskers Your Language
Custom Vocabulary is our most-requested feature. Add your own terms, acronyms, and names so Whiskers transcribes them correctly every time.
Since we launched Whiskers, one question has come up more than any other: "Can I teach it my own words?" Doctors want their medical terms transcribed correctly. Developers need their framework names and acronyms to land right. Researchers have specialized vocabulary that no general model gets right out of the box.
Today, we're releasing Custom Vocabulary as an experimental feature in Whiskers 1.5. It's the first step toward making Whiskers truly yours.
How it works
Custom Vocabulary lives in Whiskers' settings. Open it up and you'll see a simple list where you can add terms one by one, or import a batch from a text file. Each entry is a word or phrase that Whiskers should recognize and transcribe exactly as written.
Under the hood, these terms influence the speech recognition model's output by biasing its decoder toward your vocabulary. It's not retraining the model—it's nudging it to prefer your terms when it encounters ambiguous audio.
Add "WhisperKit" to your vocabulary and Whiskers will transcribe it as "WhisperKit" instead of "whisper kit" or "Whisper Kit." The same works for acronyms like "SRT," names like "Dr. Nguyen," or project names like "Project Aurora."
Tips for best results
We've been testing Custom Vocabulary internally for months. Here's what we've learned about getting the most out of it:
- •Keep entries specific. "WhisperKit" is better than "whisper." The more unique the term, the less likely it is to interfere with common words.
- •Include context variants. If you add "Dr. Nguyen," also add "Doctor Nguyen" so both spoken forms resolve correctly.
- •Use the import feature for large lists. Export your vocabulary from other tools as a plain text file—one term per line—and drop it into Whiskers.
- •Start small, then expand. Begin with your 10 most-misheard terms and add more as you notice gaps. You can always edit or remove entries later.
The Custom Vocabulary panel in Whiskers 1.5. Add terms individually or import them in bulk.
What's next
Custom Vocabulary is shipping as an experimental feature, which means we're actively collecting feedback and iterating. In the coming months, we plan to add automatic vocabulary suggestions based on your transcription history and shared vocabulary packs for teams and organizations.
If you're on Whiskers 1.5, you can try it today—open Settings and look for the Vocabulary tab. We'd love to hear how it works for your specific use case. Drop us a line at hello@whiskers.app or join the conversation on our community forum.
Your words matter. Now Whiskers knows them too.