AndyTranscribe

Upload pocket-recorder audio (MP3, WAV, OGG, and more), extract embedded metadata, and transcribe locally with faster-whisper-server via Docker. Audio never leaves your machine.

Built with Laravel 13, Blade, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS 4, Laravel Reverb, FrankenPHP, and Laravel AI.

Features

• Upload common audio formats (MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A, AAC, WebM, WMA, AIFF — up to 2 GB)
• Automatic metadata extraction when tags are present (title, artist, album, duration, recorded date)
• Search recordings by title, artist, or transcript
• Queued local transcription (faster-whisper in Docker)
• Live transcription progress over WebSockets (Reverb) on the list and detail pages
• Stop or restart a run anytime
• Copy finished transcripts from the recording detail page

Requirements

• Docker and Docker Compose (primary way to run the app)
• For native PHP development: PHP 8.3+ (8.5 recommended), Composer, Node.js & npm, SQLite

Quick start (Docker + FrankenPHP)

cp .env.example .env
# Set a key (required by the app container):
php artisan key:generate   # or: docker run --rm -v "$PWD":/app -w /app composer:2 php artisan key:generate

docker compose up --build

Open http://localhost:8080/recordings.

Service	Host port	Role
app	8080	FrankenPHP (Laravel)
reverb	8081	WebSockets for live status
whisper	8090	faster-whisper API
queue	—	queue:work for transcription jobs

Persistent data mounts

These host directories are bind-mounted into app, queue, and reverb:

Host path	Container path	Contents
./database	/app/database	SQLite database
./storage/app	/app/storage/app	Uploaded audio (private/recordings)
./storage/logs	/app/storage/logs	Application logs

Whisper model cache uses the named volume whisper-huggingface-cache.

GPU Whisper (optional)

docker compose --profile gpu up -d --build

Point LOCAL_WHISPER_URL at the GPU service if you run it instead of the CPU whisper service.

Useful Compose env

Copy values from .env.example. Important Docker-oriented variables:

Variable	Purpose
APP_KEY	Required — containers refuse to start without it
APP_URL	Default http://localhost:8080
APP_HOST_PORT	Host port for FrankenPHP (default 8080)
REVERB_HOST_PORT	Host port for Reverb WebSockets (default 8081)
WHISPER_HOST_PORT	Host port for Whisper (default 8090)
REVERB_APP_*	Reverb credentials (baked into frontend at image build for VITE_REVERB_*)
LOCAL_WHISPER_MODEL	Model name for local transcription
TRANSCRIPTION_TIMEOUT	Job/HTTP timeout in seconds (default 600)

Inside Compose, Laravel talks to Whisper at http://whisper:8000/v1 and publishes broadcasts to the reverb service. The browser connects to Reverb on localhost:8081.

Stop:

docker compose down

Native PHP development (optional)

composer setup
docker compose up -d whisper reverb
# In separate terminals:
php artisan serve --port=8000
php artisan queue:work
php artisan reverb:start
npm run dev

Set APP_URL=http://localhost:8000, LOCAL_WHISPER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8090/v1, and Reverb REVERB_HOST=localhost / REVERB_PORT=8080 (match VITE_REVERB_*).

Configuration

Finished transcripts are stored on the recording (transcript column) and are included in the recordings search box (title, artist, album, filename, and transcript).

DB_QUEUE_RETRY_AFTER must exceed TRANSCRIPTION_TIMEOUT so long Whisper jobs are not re-queued mid-run.

Usage

1. Upload audio from Recordings → Upload (single file or batch dropzone).
2. Transcription queues automatically — the Compose queue service (or php artisan queue:work) must be running.
3. Watch live progress on the recordings list or detail page (Reverb); stop and restart anytime.
4. Search the list by title, artist, or transcript text.
5. If older uploads still show Queued with no progress, use Queue pending transcriptions on the recordings list.

Tests

composer test
# or
php artisan test

License

MIT