---
title: I’m currently talking to the machine and it’s not helpful at all
teaser: Ever wondered what it would be like if you use your voice to code? Well, me
too. I tried 3 tools – with AI and without and these are my findings.
tags: voice coding,artificial intelligence,devtools,development,accessibility
author: Svenja Schäfer
published_on: 2025-03-04
---
For the past 5 1/2 years or so, I live in the South of Spain. At first, I called Almería my home but in 2024 I moved to the outskirts of Granada. That move not only brought some green nature into my life (Almería holds the only desert in Europe – check out [Tabernas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabernas) if you are interested) – it also helped with a recurring issue I faced every winter. The coldness.
Yes, Granada has a ski resort but the houses are equipped with something houses in Almería usually don't have: _calefacción_, a heating system. And while you can go swimming in December in Almería, using your keyboard **inside** the house can become quite painful. Outside, you have 17° Celsius (62.6° Fahrenheit), inside you barely reach 9°C (48.2°F). And maybe that's warm enough for other folks – my hands and feet were frozen.
Winter 2022 was extremely bad, and stopping to work was obviously not an option, so I looked into ways to improve my work setup and found [Talon Voice](https://talon.wiki/) – a hands-free input replacement for the keyboard and mouse. I [started](https://talonvoice.com/docs/index.html#getting-started) playing around with it and tried several [exercises](https://chaosparrot.github.io/talon_practice/) – with more or less luck. But apart from updating the alphabet so it would recognise my commands better, I didn't make much progress. I spent the winter that followed tucked in in my van in Ireland (it has a heating system) and since last winter, I enjoy the heating system in Granada. So cold hands became a thing of the past.
## May AI help with hands-free coding?
The interest in hands-free coding didn't vanish and every now and then I talk about it with my colleagues. It was during one of these conversations that [Jose](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/authors/jose-blanco) mentioned [Serenade.ai](https://serenade.ai/) – an open-source voice assistant using Artificial Intelligence. My brain immediately reacted: I have to try it – maybe it will make things _easier_.
I also remembered GitHub Voice ("Hey, GitHub") and thought about trying that one as well. In the end, I've tested 3 tools/toolsets: [Copilot Voice](https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-voice/) (that's what was called "Hey, GitHub" before), Serenade.ai and Talon Voice in combination with [Cursorless](https://www.cursorless.org/).
This is what I tried to achieve: Opening a file in VS Code, finding the word "Rob", adding the line `:authors_location: United Kingdom`, copying that line, finding the word "Fritz", pasting the line and changing United Kingdom to South Africa. Here's how it went:
## Copilot Voice
What was previously known as "Hey, GitHub" is now a [Visual Studio extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.vscode-speech) called "Copilot Voice". The fact that it's a VS code extension is not a problem for me since I'm using the editor. What I do find irritating is that despite calling it "Voice", there's not much you actually can do without your keyboard.
By default, you have to use a keyboard command every time you want to speak to your machine. This can get updated in the settings though:
You have different options on where the "chat" shall appear when you say "Hey Code": `chatInView`, `quickChat`, `inlineChat` or `chatInContext`.
`inlineChat` will display the chat in the file and line you are currently working in. You will see in the short video below how that worked out for me. `chatInContext` and `quickChat` weren't much better.
`chatInView` kind of works – and quite nicely, too. But here's the thing: it's a chat, not a tool that lets you use your voice to write code. You can have a chat with Copilot. Not more, not less. For some this might be enough. For me it didn't fit the purpose.
Here's the attempt with Copilot Voice:
## Serenade.ai
As the name implies, Serenade uses AI to transform voice commands into code or keyboard commands. I like that it's open-source and it's nice that it's not restricted to the editor: you could also use it in the [browser](https://serenade.ai/docs/browser). For the purpose of this blog post, I focus on the editor part.
After installing Serenade, I started with a short Ruby exercise which worked quite well – although I had the feeling that it just works so great because it was an exercise. As soon as I entered the world outside of this exercise, I had a bit of a hard time with my pronunciation: to be fair, I'm German, so it might be easier for you. Also, please don't ask why I somehow didn't realise that I used the German "U" pronunciation instead of the English one. But since this is a safe space, I didn't want to withhold this fail from you. English is hard.
After some more attempts, I reached this point:
I have to say, it was quite enjoyable to use Serenade. I also tested it in combination with GitHub Copilot which worked okay but in the end, it didn't convince me, mainly because of these two reasons:
- the [open-source project](https://github.com/serenadeai/serenade) is no longer actively maintained. To this day, the last commit is from 3 years ago.
- I don't really see a reason that justifies the usage of AI for this.
I know that the second point is a very subjective one but at least for now, I prefer to not use a decision-making tool when the differences aren't superb.
## Talon and Cursorless
First of all, Talon works absolutely fine without Cursorless, but since I found it, I don't want to miss it anymore. I will tell you more about it after you watched this little video of me using Talon and Cursorless:
Some things are very different from the Serenade.ai video. The little symbols above some characters for examples are elements from Cursorless – they act as anchors and can vary in form and colour.
You also might have heard that I don't really speak English, like in whole sentences. With Talon, you have a special alphabet you can use when you want to write something. This alphabet has some huge advantages for me: if the engine doesn't understand my English – for example because I use the very German pronunciation of an "U" – I can use it and the input will be correct. For my little Serenade "South" disaster, I could have just said:
"shift (to capitalise the next letter) sun – ost - urge - trap - ham". Easy-peasy, isn't it?
It's also nice that I can adapt the alphabet – I use "ham" instead of "harp" because Talon's voice engine does not know what I want when I say "harp" but it does understand it when I say "ham".
Something else I like about Talon is that it's not restricted to the editor – I can use it for _everything_ where I used my mouse or keyboard before. When I'm in the editor, I use the support from [Cursorless](https://www.cursorless.org/) and when I search the web [Rango](https://github.com/david-tejada/rango) is helping me. There's also a fabulous [cheatsheets](https://talon-knausj-cheatsheet.netlify.app/) that I can recommend. And all that without AI.
## Final words
By no means shall this blog post be understood as AI bashing – I do think there's value in using Artificial Intelligence. If you use it wisely. But I do want to highlight that you don't really need it to improve a situation. If you have trouble using your hands when working on your laptop, don't jump instantly on the AI train – check out and support projects like Talon.
In order to not get overwhelmed the way I did when I tried Talon the first time, do small steps: start with some short daily exercises and increase the intensity over time. And despite saying that it wasn't helpful at all when I talked to 'the machine' – it did have a positive aspect: I **think** more before I write _something_; be it code or text which leads to fewer bugs and saves a lot of energy at the end of the day.