ADR-v2-003 — Spoken Edit Mode (open-ended interactive dictation)¶

Status: Accepted (2026-07-02) · Wave A Context links: [[adr-v2-000-interaction-layer]], [[adr-v04-001-slm-inference]] (Tier-2 SLM), command-key work (v1.2.0)

Context¶

The voice-HCI research (internal) identifies editing by voice as the weak link: the best offline tools use rigid "select X / correct Y" grammars or require a mouse, while open-ended spoken editing (MS TERTiUS "Toward Interactive Dictation", Rambler CHI'24 "gist manipulation") is research-only and not available offline. YazSes has a Tier-1 regex grammar + optional Tier-2 SLM router and a dedicated command key.

Decision¶

Add an opt-in Spoken Edit Mode that applies open-ended edits to recently dictated text: 1. A small set of text operations over the last-injected span / editor buffer: replace ("change 'their' to 'there'"), delete ("delete the last sentence"), case ("capitalize that"), reflow, and "respeak this". Covered by an extended grammar for the common ~20 ops. 2. Dictate-vs-command disambiguation: use the existing command key as the explicit signal (held → edit command, not literal text), avoiding the segmentation ambiguity that makes fully-implicit interactive dictation hard. Optional Tier-2 SLM handles fuzzier phrasings when confidence is low. 3. Destructive-op guard: deletes/replaces over multi-word spans require a quick confirm (spoken or overlay), per the human-in-the-loop invariant.

Config: [commands] spoken_edit=false (+ reuse existing slm_*). Lives in commands/ (new edit_ops.py) wired into dispatch.py.

Consequences¶

• + Removes the biggest time-sink for hands-free users (fixing without a mouse); offline parity with cloud "interactive dictation" research.
• + Reuses grammar + SLM router + command key; incremental.
• − Ambiguity (content vs command) → mitigated by the command-key signal + confirm guard.
• − Editor-buffer editing needs a target (last-injected span, or editor bridge) → start with last-span operations; deepen via LSP/editor bridges where present.