The Dictionary is where you tell Samurai Scribe how you spell the words it can’t know: colleagues’ names, clients, products, project codes and jargon. Add Kubernetes, Siobhán or ACME-42 once, and from then on they come out spelled your way in meeting transcripts, live captions and dictation. Open it with Dictionary in the sidebar.

Your lists are Markdown notes in the vault’s Dictionary/ folder, so you can also edit them in Obsidian or any other editor. The first ten entries are free; more apply with Pro.

What the Dictionary changes

Transcripts, live captions and dictation write each of your terms as you spelled it.
The AI is given your spellings when it writes a summary, polishes a dictation or answers in the assistant, so it spells them your way too.
A new entry applies straight away, even during a recording: what is said after you add it is spelled your way.
Meetings you already have don’t change by themselves. You can fix them in one go: see Fixing earlier meetings.

Everything the Dictionary does runs on your computer.

Terms and how they get misheard

An entry is a term, the word, name or phrase spelled your way, with, if you like, what the transcript writes instead.

A term with how it gets misheard, such as Kubernetes heard as “cooper netties”, replaces those words wherever they appear. Add as many misheard forms as you see.
A term on its own is corrected only when it looks like one of your names: a capital inside it, a digit, an accent, or more than one word. Ordinary words are left alone, so a plain-looking term needs its misheard forms to be corrected.

The Dictionary page

Dictionary in the sidebar opens the page. From the top:

The list switcher. Click Dictionary ▾ for your lists, each with how many terms it has, or Off. New list… makes another; more than one list needs Pro. Under Notes in the folder, Use … as a list turns a note already in the Dictionary/ folder into a list.
Open in editor shows the list as the note it is. More has Rename, Switch off (or Switch on) and Delete list, which moves the note to the vault’s trash.
The add box. Type a term in Add a word, name or phrase and press Add. How it gets misheard › opens a second field for what the transcript writes instead, separated by commas: cooper netties, kuber nettis.
Names you use suggests names from your people notes and recent calendar invites. Click one to add it, Add all to add every one, or × (Don’t suggest this) to stop suggesting it.
Terms lists the list’s entries. Click a term to change its spelling. Hover it for + (Add how it gets misheard) and Delete; the × on a misheard form removes it. Undo, in the message after a delete, puts the term back. A long list gets a Find a term box.
Sound check shows the two models that listen for your terms in the audio.
Meetings has Add each meeting’s names: see Each meeting’s names.

If a line of the note can’t be read as an entry, the page says how many, with Show to list them and why, and Open in editor to fix them.

Adding a word from where it went wrong

You don’t have to open the Dictionary page to add a word. Add it where you saw it go wrong:

Replace All in a transcript. Press Cmd+F on a Mac or Ctrl+F on Windows in a meeting’s transcript, fix a word everywhere with Replace All, and the app asks “Always write … for …?”. Press Add to Dictionary to make the fix one the Dictionary makes from now on.
A selected word in a transcript. Select the word or words in a transcript line, right-click, and choose Add to Dictionary….
A dictation in your history. On the Dictation page, hover a dictation and click Add to Dictionary….

Add to Dictionary… opens a small window: Write it as is the spelling you want, and Heard as (optional) is what was written instead. Press Add. Words added this way go into your Main list.

Fixing earlier meetings

When you add or change an entry, the app looks through your earlier transcripts for what it fixes. If it finds any, it says so, such as “Added Kubernetes. Fix 6 mentions in 3 meetings?”. Press Review…:

The window lists each line it would change, by meeting, newest first, with what the line was. Untick a line to leave it as it is.
A meeting that can’t be changed right now, such as one being processed, says why.
Review 6 changes turns your choice into changes that wait for you, like any change from the assistant: nothing is written until you keep it, and you can undo it afterwards. See Changes, modes and undo.

Only an entry that applies can fix earlier meetings: without Pro, an entry past the first ten waits, and so does its fix.

Each meeting’s names

With Add each meeting’s names on, which it is unless you switch it off, every meeting gets its own names as terms: yours and those of everyone on its calendar invite, spelled as their people notes spell them. They apply to that meeting only, and they never count toward the free entries.

Hearing your terms in the audio

The sound check finds your terms in the sound, not only in the text. When a word looks like one of your terms, or one of the meeting’s names, the recording under it is checked. So “Shivon” becomes Siobhán when Siobhán is on your list, even with nothing listed as misheard.

It has two models, and the language of what is said picks which one listens:

English for English meetings and dictation.
Other languages for 17 more: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, German, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Until the model for a language is downloaded, your terms in that language are found by their spelling only. The sound check is free.

Downloading it. Each model is a one-time download, offered:

in setup, as the optional Find your names and terms in the sound, for the language your meetings are in;
on the Dictionary page, under Sound check, and as No sound check yet under the add box while the model for your meeting language is missing;
in Settings → AI Models, on the Dictionary card.

Both models run on your computer and send nothing anywhere. To remove one, open its More menu and choose Remove from this computer…; your terms are then fixed by their spelling only in its languages. What downloading a model sends is on the network page.

Lists are notes in your vault

Each list is a Markdown note in the Dictionary/ folder of your vault. The first list is Main.md, made when you add your first term. A list looks like this:

---
samurai_kind: dictionary
enabled: true
---
- Samurai Scribe
- cooper netties, kuber nettis -> Kubernetes
- [[Dana Ruiz]]

Each entry is a bullet at the start of a line (-, * or +).
A bullet on its own is a term, spelled as written.
What it is misheard as comes first, separated by commas, then -> (or →), then the one way to write it.
A link, such as [[Dana Ruiz]], counts as its text, so you can link people notes.
Backticks keep a part exactly as written: use them for a misheard form with a comma in it, or a term with an arrow, {, } or | in it.
Everything else is yours. Headings, paragraphs and comments are never read, so you can explain the list in it.
samurai_kind: dictionary is what makes a note a list. A note in the folder without it is left alone, so notes of your own can sit there too.
enabled: false switches the list off, as Switch off on the Dictionary page does.

Some lines aren’t read as entries: an indented bullet, a task (- [ ]), a second arrow on one line, and {, } or | outside backticks or a link. The Dictionary page lists them under Show.

Edits in either place. The page changes only the line you edit, and keeps the rest of the note as you wrote it. A change you make in another editor applies the next time the Dictionary is used. If the note changed since the page opened it, an edit on the page isn’t made: the page reads the note again and says so.

Several lists, such as Clients or Medical, need Pro. Your Main list comes first, then the others by name. If two lists say different things about the same misheard words, the first one wins, and the page marks the entry that loses.

Moving the folder. Settings → Vault → Folders has a Dictionary row: press Change… to put it somewhere else in the vault. See moving the app’s folders.

What is free and what needs Pro

Free:

your Main list, and the first ten entries in it, everywhere speech becomes text;
each meeting’s names, which never count toward the ten;
the sound check, in every language it hears;
fixing earlier meetings with an entry that applies.

With Pro, every entry applies, and you can keep more lists, each switched on and off on its own.

Without Pro you can still add as many entries as you like: the page shows how many of the ten free entries you have used (“6 of 10 free entries”, or “14 entries · the first 10 apply free” past ten), and the entries after the tenth sit under Below here applies with Pro. They are kept, and apply the moment Pro does.