Sam W. made me stop typing prompts

Last Friday at the 2026 SSW Brisbane brainstorming, I got to work with Sam W.

If you have worked with Sam, you know the vibe. He is chill, practical, and usually 2 steps ahead with AI workflows.

I thought my prompting setup was fine. It was not.

My old workflow looked like this:

Or even worse, type the prompt manually 🤢 (that was Sam's face when he saw me typing).

Then Sam showed me Handy, a free and open source speech-to-text app.

That changed everything.

handy.computer

I downloaded the app from handy.computer.

On 1st launch, Handy asked me to choose a local model. Sam told me to pick OpenAI Whisper Turbo. I picked it. No debate 🫡 (Sir Yes Sir).

Once the local model finished downloading, I gave Handy two permissions:

Done.

On Mac, I press Option + Space.

I speak.

Handy transcribes and pastes directly where my cursor is.

Then I hit Enter and keep going.

On Windows, the default shortcut is Ctrl + Space.

That is it.

No copy-paste dance. No app switching. No transcription API cost.

Just hold Option + Space, speak, enter, repeat.

This tiny workflow change has made a real difference for me.

I can prompt faster, stay in flow, and skip the ChatGPT copy-paste loop because everything runs locally.

If you are still transcribing using ChatGPT web app and pasting into another, try Handy:

Your keyboard deserves a break.