ericclemmons/aside

Aside is a macOS menu bar app that lets you control coding with your voice. Press a hotkey, speak your prompt, and it sends your words, along with context from whatever you're looking at, to an AI coding assistant. Instead of typing out instructions or switching windows, you just talk and your code editor gets the message. The app lives in your menu bar (no dock icon). You press the Right Option key from anywhere on your Mac and start speaking. It transcribes your speech on-device, meaning the audio is processed locally rather than sent to a cloud server. While you talk, it grabs context from your current window: which app is active, what URL your browser is on, and what text you have selected. Then it sends the whole package, your transcribed prompt plus that context, to OpenCode, a command-line coding assistant. It has two modes. "Hold to type" means you hold down the hotkey, speak, and release to type your transcribed words directly into whatever field is active. "Tap to dispatch" lets you tap to start recording, tap again to stop, pick a coding session with arrow keys, and send the prompt to OpenCode. The transcription can use Apple's built-in speech recognition, WhisperKit, or Parakeet, all running on your Mac. This is for developers who want to stay in flow and use voice instead of typing. If you're looking at code, reading documentation in a browser, or referencing a URL and want to ask an AI to build or fix something, you just speak naturally rather than breaking focus to type everything out. The project is written in Swift using native macOS UI tools, and requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. It needs permissions for microphone, speech recognition, and accessibility access to work properly. The release process is fully automated, pushing code changes triggers automatic version bumps, builds, Apple notarization, and Homebrew updates.