Why we started Skald
Notes on building a dictation tool that respects language as material.
Skald is old Norse for poet — the one who tells what was, and writes down what remains. We didn’t want yet another AI assistant. We wanted a tool, with a button you hold and a cursor that catches words.
A button, a voice, a cursor
Most dictation tools either run in a window of their own, or sit inside a single app. Neither matches how people actually work. You hold a hotkey, you speak, you release. The text appears where the cursor was. That’s it. No window, no preview pane, no editor to copy from.
Quiet by default
Audio lives in memory and goes nowhere it doesn’t have to. Cleanup is handled by a writing assistant that adapts to whatever app you’re typing in — a quick note in chat is treated differently from an email to a stranger. No analytics. No telemetry. No third-party JavaScript on this page.
If you want to follow along, the changelog is where every change gets noted, with a date and a short reason.