cli on S Anand

Voice coding is the new live coding

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:18:17 +0000

In Feb 2025 at PyConf Hyderabad, I tried a new slide format: command-line slideshows in bash.

I’ve used this format in more talks since then:

LLMs in the CLI, PyCon Singapore, Jun 2025
Agents in the CLI, Singapore Python User Group, Jul 2025
DuckDB is the new Pandas, PyCon India, Sep 2025

It’s my favorite format. I can demo code without breaking the presentation flow.
It also draws interest. My setup was the top question in my PyCon talk.

In Sep 2025, at PyCon India, I extended the setup for voice typing. talkcode.sh is a Bash pipeline that:

uses ffmpeg to record mic into as 16 kHz mono, voice-optimized .opus
sends audio to Gemini via llm for transcription
uses awk to extract the code fence
uses xclip to copy the code to the clipboard
uses xdotool to paste it back to the original window

# Mic only, 16 kHz mono, voice filtering, fast Opus
ffmpeg -hide_banner -v error \
  -f pulse -i default \
  -ac 1 -ar 16000 \
  -af "highpass=f=100,lowpass=f=6000" \
  -c:a libopus -b:a 16k -vbr on \
  -compression_level 2 -application voip -frame_duration 60 \
  -y "$AUDIO"

# Transcribe, extract the code fence and copy to clipboard
llm -m gemini-2.5-flash -a "$AUDIO" -s "$SYSTEM_TEXT" \
  | tee /dev/tty \
  | awk 'BEGIN{f=0} /```/{f=!f; next} f{buf=buf$0"\n"} END{print buf}' \
  | xclip -selection clipboard

# Bring last window to foreground and paste from clipboard
if [ -n "${ACTIVE_WIN:-}" ]; then
  xdotool windowactivate --sync "$ACTIVE_WIN"
  sleep 0.08
  xdotool key --clearmodifiers ctrl+shift+v
fi

During the workshop, I said, “Which (judicial) bench has the longest pending cases,” and it generated a DuckDB query that, single-shot, ran correctly on the Indian High Court judgements dataset.

But LLMs are slow and break the flow. Here’s how I keep the room engaged:

Dictate, don’t type. Speaking is faster and more engaging. That’s why I built this workflow.
Avoid Alt-Tab. Bring the LLM into your app. Window-switching and copy-paste break focus for you and the audience.
Always stream output. Narrate as it loads. | tee /dev/tty streams while piping.
Answer questions while you wait. Keep a Slido Q&A open and address the top ones while waiting for the LLM.

Pipes May Be All You Need

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 11:49:24 +0000

Switching to a Linux machine has advantages. My thinking’s moving from apps to pipes.

I wanted a spaced repetition app to remind me quotes from my notes. I began by writing a prompt for Claude Code:

Write a program that I can run like uv run recall.py --files 10 --lines 200 --model gpt-4.1-mini [PATHS...] that suggests points from my notes to recall. It should

--files 10: Pick the 10 latest files from the PATHs (defaulting to ~/Dropbox/notes)
--lines 200: Take the top 200 lines (which usually have the latest information)
--model gpt-4.1-mini: Pass it to this model and ask it to summarize points to recall

Then I realized that I could do this on the CLI:

find ~/Dropbox/notes -type f -printf "%T@ %p\n" \   # Print the timestamp and file path
  | sort -nr \                                      # Sort latest first
  | head -n 10 \                                    # Pick the 10 latest files
  | cut -d" " -f2- \                                # Drop the timestamp, just get paths
  | xargs -I {} head -n 200 "{}" \                  # Get the first 200 lines
  | llm -s "List 3 points to remember"              # Ask an LLM to share points to recall

This works well!

Windows XP commands

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Windows XP commands for the command prompt.

Comments

sathish 11 Apr 2006 11:18 am: this is a cool link