Auto-Edits
How Epilude uses AI to polish your dictated text before inserting it — fixing punctuation, capitalization, and formatting automatically.
What are Auto-Edits?
After you finish dictating, Epilude can send your raw transcript through an AI model that cleans up punctuation, capitalization, and formatting before inserting the text. This is called Auto-Edits — it turns rough speech into polished writing without changing your words.
How it works
When you release your hotkey (or stop hands-free dictation), Epilude processes your text in stages:
- Transcription — Your speech is converted to text by your transcription provider (Deepgram or OpenAI Whisper)
- Smart Formatting — Local rules handle spoken cues like "comma" or "new paragraph" (if enabled)
- Auto-Edits — An AI model applies punctuation, capitalization, and formatting polish
- Insertion — The final text is inserted at your cursor
The entire pipeline takes about a second for most dictations.
What Auto-Edits do
- Fix punctuation — Add periods, commas, and question marks where they belong
- Correct capitalization — Capitalize sentence beginnings and proper nouns
- Clean up formatting — Ensure lists, line breaks, and paragraph structure look right
What Auto-Edits don't do
Auto-Edits preserve your words and meaning. They will never:
- Change your word choice or vocabulary
- Rewrite your sentences or grammar
- Add new content you didn't say
- Remove or summarize your words
- Change the meaning of what you dictated
Your words, polished
Think of Auto-Edits as a formatting pass, not a rewrite. What you say is what you get — just with cleaner punctuation and capitalization.
Enabling Auto-Edits
Configure an AI provider
You need an AI provider configured for text formatting — either OpenAI or Anthropic. Go to Settings → AI Providers and enter your API key.
Turn on LLM post-processing
In Settings → AI Providers, enable LLM post-processing. This tells Epilude to run your text through the AI after transcription.
When Auto-Edits aren't available
If you haven't configured an AI provider or have disabled LLM post-processing, Epilude falls back to Smart Formatting — a local, rule-based system that handles spoken punctuation cues and list formatting without an internet connection.
The key difference:
| Auto-Edits | Smart Formatting | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | AI model (cloud) | Local rules |
| Punctuation | Adds punctuation automatically | Only when you say "comma", "period", etc. |
| Capitalization | Fixes automatically | Basic sentence case |
| Requires | AI provider API key + internet | Nothing — works offline |
Tips
- Keep dictations focused — Auto-Edits work best when you dictate one topic or thought at a time
- Pair with Smart Formatting — Enable both for the best results. Smart Formatting handles your spoken cues, then Auto-Edits polishes the rest
- Check your API key — If text is inserting without polish, verify your key in Settings → AI Providers
Related
- Smart Formatting — Rule-based formatting with voice cues
- AI Providers — Configure your API keys
- Hands-free dictation — Dictate longer text without holding a key