SchnickSchnack: The Dictation App, that Refuses to Be Boring

SchnickSchnack: The Dictation App, that Refuses to Be Boring.

When I first stumbled across a YouTube podcaster raving about his favorite dictation tool, I didn’t expect a spark to ignite. He brushed off the price, “just five euros a month”, and then went on about his podcasting.
The whole dictation industry is milking subscription fees.
My hate for subscription‑based lock‑ins; turning tools into rent‑paying obligations, led me to a lengthy planning meetings with my application building AI Agent. Build me a free secretary. No subscription, and no feature bloat. I don't even want to pay for AI tokens.

Dictation can be so much more then only converting speech to text; it can be about giving your secretary a personality, a purpose, and a context.

Let me walk you through my AI writing cast and use cases and the moments that made me realize how powerful, and entertaining, speech‑to‑text can be.

The Clean‑Cut “Smart” Mode.

The first secretary is pragmatic. It listens for filler sounds, “uh,” “eh,” “um”, and wipes them out in real time. It’s the silent editor, turning hesitant speech into crisp prose.

Gonzo Mode: The Wild Journalist.

It spews out raw, kinetic prose, perfect for a blog post that needs an edge or a live‑event recap that feels like a front‑row seat. No filters, just pure, unapologetic energy.

The Hype‑Man.

Want your social‑media copy to pop? Switch to the Hype‑Man, and it adds emojis, exclamation points, and a rhythm that begs for likes and retweets. It’s the digital cheerleader that pumps up even the most mundane announcement.

The “C-Suit” Professional.

Imagine a tie‑clad, polished executive who never loses its temper. I tested this mode while venting about my neighborhood postal service: packages constantly ending up in the wrong apartments, left in hallways, or tossed into basements with no one to claim them. The C-Suit secretary mode took my angry rant, stripped away every angry rant, and produced a perfectly courteous complaint letter. I burst out laughing at the contrast, a perfect example of how tone can transform perception.

Hausmeister (The Tutor).

Hausmeister outputs a prompt for AI, to produce research papers, homework or study notes. It offers structure, suggests transitions, and ensures the argument flows logically.

Gherkin Mode: The QA Companion.

For the software quality assurance tester among us, Gherkin Mode translates spoken software bugs and issue descriptions into Gherkin syntax, the language of behavior‑driven development.
It will reformat any lengthy ramblings, or vage description into nicely, formatted gherkin speak.
See example:

Scenario: Highlight search terms accurately when opening a document from search results.

Given the user enters a search term in the binder search box.

And the binder displays a list of documents with the matching terms highlighted in yellow.

When the user clicks on one of the highlighted documents to open it.

Then the editor should parse the document HTML correctly.

And the highlighted term should align precisely with the actual word in the document.

And no incorrect or off‑center highlighting should appear.

Technology, when crafted with a sense of play, can be both useful and wildly entertaining.
Try the app and tell me what you think.

https://jeffmeridian.pages.dev/games/schnickschnack/?lang=en