SpeakWith

Guides

Draft by voice, arrange afterwards

You do not have to know where everything goes before you start talking. Record each idea as it comes, in any order. Every recording lands in the day document as its own section, and the Outline lets you drag those sections into the order the document needs, nested where they belong. The words stay exactly what you said, and the result is plain markdown, so the draft is already in a form every editor can open. This page shows the two moves a drag can make, an indent and a reorder, each as a before and after of the same five recordings.

SpeakWith Outline poster. The wordmark is at the top right and on each figure. Two before and after figures of the same five recorded text blocks. Each block shows a recorded time, a short heading, and one or two lines of spoken words. A curved arrow runs from the moved block on the left to its new place on the right. Figure 1: the second recording is nested one step under the first, a dashed outline marks where it sat, and the order is unchanged. Figure 2: the fifth recording has moved up between the second and the third, and nothing is indented. The words are the same on both sides.

Figure 1. Indent. The second recording is nested under the first. The spoken order is unchanged, and so is every time.

Figure 2. Reorder. The fifth recording moves up between the second and the third. Nothing is indented.

Record first, arrange second

Spoken ideas arrive in time order. A finished document is in topic order. The Outline is the bridge between the two: every row is one recording, with the time you started speaking and the words you said, and a drag changes neither. It changes only where the recording sits in the day document: under another recording, or earlier or later in the day. Keep each recording to one idea and you will have more to arrange.

Indent

Drop a row toward the right edge of the row above it and it nests one step under that row. Figure 1 nests the second recording under the first. The spoken order is unchanged, and so is every time. A row nests one step at a time; a drop that would skip a level is refused.

Reorder

Drop a row between two others and it moves there, still at the same level. Figure 2 moves the fifth recording up between the second and the third. Nothing is indented. The day document keeps a recording's time marker only where the times still read in order, so a recording moved ahead of earlier ones drops its marker there. The words are untouched.

Apply and Undo

A drop is a preview. The Outline shows the new arrangement at once, but nothing on disk changes until you press Apply, which writes the arrangement to the day document. Undo takes back the last drag. Drops you never apply change nothing.

See also: Send to agent, which takes the Outline rows you have checked to a coding agent on your Mac.