chough

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Fast ASR CLI tool for transcribing audio/video files. Use when user wants to transcribe audio/video, generate subtitles (VTT), convert speech to text with timestamps (JSON), or optimize transcription for low memory.

1installs

Sourcehyperpuncher/dotagents

Added on2026-03-01

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add hyperpuncher/dotagents chough

SKILL.md Content

View Translation Comparison →

Installation

Arch Linux:

paru -S chough-bin

macOS:

brew install --cask hyperpuncher/tap/chough

Windows:

winget install chough

Source:

go install github.com/hyperpuncher/chough/cmd/chough@latest

Requires:

ffmpeg

for audio/video support

Quick Reference

bash

# Basic transcription (text to stdout)
chough audio.mp3

# JSON with timestamps
chough -f json podcast.mp3 > transcript.json

# WebVTT subtitles
chough -f vtt -o subs.vtt video.mp4

# Low memory (30s chunks)
chough -c 30 audiobook.mp3

Flags

Flag	Description	Default
`-c, --chunk-size`	Chunk size in seconds	60
`-f, --format`	Output: text, json, vtt	text
`-o, --output`	Output file	stdout
`--version`	Show version	-

Chunk Size Guide

15-30s: Low memory (~500MB), higher error rate
60s: Balanced (default) - ~1.6GB RAM

Performance

Duration	Time	Speed
15s	2.0s	7.4x realtime
1min	4.3s	14.1x realtime
5min	16.2s	18.5x realtime
30min	90.2s	19.9x realtime

Troubleshooting

Out of memory: Use

-c 30

or

-c 15

Model fails: Check internet, verify

$XDG_CACHE_HOME

is writable ffmpeg errors: Ensure ffmpeg is installed

Notes

First run downloads ~650MB model to
```
$XDG_CACHE_HOME/chough/models
```
Auto-extracts audio from video files
Set
```
CHOUGH_MODEL
```
env var to use custom model path
VTT groups tokens into subtitle cues automatically

Docs

GitHub