Asi live-recording

Always-on audio capture via whisper-cpp to org file with Emacs live display

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/plurigrid/asi

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/plurigrid/asi "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/skills/live-recording" ~/.claude/skills/plurigrid-asi-live-recording && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: skills/live-recording/SKILL.md

source content

Live Recording

Always-on environmental audio capture. Records continuously, transcribes with whisper-cpp (Metal-accelerated), appends timestamped entries to an org file viewable live in Emacs.

Activation

1. Start tmux capture session

tmux new-session -d -s capture \
  'while true; do bash ~/v/scripts/always-on-capture.sh; echo "[restart] $(date)"; sleep 2; done'

The auto-restart loop ensures crash resilience. The script records 6s WAV chunks via ffmpeg avfoundation device

:1

, silence-detects via sox RMS (

< 0.005

), transcribes non-silent chunks with

whisper-cli --model ~/v/ggml-base.en.bin

, and appends

** [timestamp]\ntext\n

entries to

~/v/audio-capture.org

2. Open in Emacs with live updates

M-x server-start                          ;; required for emacsclient
C-x C-f ~/v/audio-capture.org             ;; open the file
M-x auto-revert-tail-mode                 ;; live tail as entries append

auto-revert-tail-mode

(not

auto-revert-mode

) tails the end of the buffer as new entries arrive, keeping your cursor at the latest transcription.

3. Monitor (optional)

tmux attach -t capture          # watch capture output
tail -f ~/v/audio-capture.org   # terminal tail

Stopping

tmux kill-session -t capture

Configuration (in always-on-capture.sh)

Variable	Default	Purpose
`AUDIO_DEVICE`	`:1`	avfoundation device ( `:0` = screen, `:1` = mic)
`CHUNK_SECONDS`	`6`	Recording window per chunk
`SILENCE_THRESHOLD`	`0.005`	RMS below this = silence (suppressed)
`MIN_TEXT_LEN`	`6`	Discard transcriptions shorter than this
`MODEL`	`~/v/ggml-base.en.bin`	Whisper GGML model path
`ORG_FILE`	`~/v/audio-capture.org`	Output org file

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
All chunks "no audio"	Wrong device index	`ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""` to find mic
All chunks "silence"	Threshold too high	Lower `SILENCE_THRESHOLD` in script (default 0.005)
Emacs not updating	No server-start	`M-x server-start` then reopen file
Emacs not tailing	Wrong mode	Use `auto-revert-tail-mode` not `auto-revert-mode`
Script exits immediately	`set -e` + non-fatal error	Script uses `set -uo pipefail` (no `-e` )

Related Files

```
~/v/audio-capture.org
```
-- live output file
```
~/v/scripts/always-on-capture.sh
```
-- capture script
```
~/v/audio_acset.duckdb
```
-- structured audio database (ACSets schema)
```
~/v/scripts/audio-capture-org.py
```
-- Python/mlx-whisper alternative