The hardware and bandwidth for this mirror is donated by dogado GmbH, the Webhosting and Full Service-Cloud Provider. Check out our Wordpress Tutorial.
If you wish to report a bug, or if you are interested in having us mirror your free-software or open-source project, please feel free to contact us at mirror[@]dogado.de.

stt.api

stt.api is a minimal, backend-agnostic R client for OpenAI-compatible speech-to-text (STT) APIs, with optional local fallbacks.

It lets you transcribe audio in R without caring which backend actually performs the transcription.

What stt.api is (and is not)

✅ What it is

• A unified interface for speech-to-text in R

• A way to switch easily between:

  • {whisper} (native R torch, local GPU/CPU)
  • OpenAI /v1/audio/transcriptions (cloud or local servers)

• Designed for scripting, Shiny apps, containers, and reproducible pipelines

❌ What it is not

• Not a Whisper reimplementation
• Not a model manager
• Not a GPU / CUDA helper
• Not an audio preprocessing toolkit
• Not a replacement for {whisper}

Installation

remotes::install_github("cornball-ai/stt.api")

Required dependencies are minimal:

• curl
• jsonlite

Optional backends:

• {whisper} (recommended, on CRAN)

Quick start

install.packages("whisper")
remotes::install_github("cornball-ai/stt.api")

library(stt.api)

res <- stt("speech.wav")
res$text

That’s it. With {whisper} installed, stt() transcribes locally on GPU or CPU with no configuration needed.

Other backends

stt.api also supports OpenAI-compatible APIs for cloud or container-based transcription:

set_stt_base("http://localhost:4123")
# Optional, for hosted services like OpenAI
set_stt_key(Sys.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"))

res <- stt("speech.wav", backend = "openai")

This works with OpenAI, Whisper containers, LM Studio, OpenWebUI, AnythingLLM, or any server implementing /v1/audio/transcriptions.

Automatic backend selection

When you call stt() without specifying a backend, it picks the first available:

1. {whisper} (native R torch, if installed)
2. OpenAI-compatible API (if stt.api_base is set)
3. Error with guidance

Normalized output

Regardless of backend, stt() always returns the same structure:

list(
  text     = "Transcribed text",
  segments = NULL | data.frame(...),
  language = "en",
  backend  = "api" | "whisper",
  raw      = <raw backend response>
)

This makes it easy to switch backends without changing downstream code.

Health checks

stt_health()

Returns:

list(
  ok = TRUE,
  backend = "api",
  message = "OK"
)

Useful for Shiny apps and deployment checks.

Backend selection

Explicit backend choice:

stt("speech.wav", backend = "openai")
stt("speech.wav", backend = "whisper")

Automatic selection (default):

stt("speech.wav")

Supported endpoints

stt.api targets the OpenAI-compatible STT spec:

POST /v1/audio/transcriptions

This is intentionally chosen because it is:

• Widely adopted
• Simple
• Supported by many local and hosted services
• Easy to proxy and containerize

Configuration options

options(
  stt.api_base = NULL,
  stt.api_key  = NULL,
  stt.timeout  = 60
)

Setters:

set_stt_base()
set_stt_key()

Error handling philosophy

• No silent failures
• Clear messages when a backend is unavailable
• Actionable instructions when configuration is missing

Example:

Error in stt():
No transcription backend available.
Install whisper or set stt.api_base.

Relationship to tts.api

stt.api is designed to pair cleanly with tts.api:

Both share:

• Minimal dependencies
• OpenAI-compatible API focus
• Backend-agnostic design
• Optional Docker support

Why this package exists

Installing and maintaining local Whisper backends can be difficult:

• CUDA / cuBLAS issues
• Compiler toolchains
• Platform differences

stt.api lets you decouple your R code from those concerns.

Your transcription code stays the same whether the backend is:

• Local
• Containerized
• Cloud-hosted
• GPU-accelerated
• CPU-only

License

MIT

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
Health stats visible at Monitor.