use-local-whisper

use-local-whisper is a skill for Claude Code from sbusso/claudeclaw. It costs 46 tokens per session (1,370 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for replacing the OpenAI Whisper voice-transcription service with whisper.cpp, which runs speech-to-text locally on an Apple Silicon Mac.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to configure local WhatsApp transcription with whisper.cpp, FFmpeg, and a downloaded speech model.
Why use it?
It allows WhatsApp voice messages to be transcribed on the device without an API key, network access, or per-use cost.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the claudeclaw plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to configure local WhatsApp transcription with whisper.cpp, FFmpeg, and a downloaded speech model.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add sbusso/claudeclaw --skill use-local-whisper
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sbusso/claudeclaw

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claudeclaw, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for use-local-whisper

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for use-local-whisper

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sbusso/claudeclaw/use-local-whisper.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,370 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 7 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Rogue Agent · line 97
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 103
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 106
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 108
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 109
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 150
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 109
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00046 $0.01370
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00685
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00274
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00137

Measured 11d ago against content hash cebfd5282209, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

use-local-whisper scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -L -o data/models/ggml-base.bin "https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/ggml-base.bin"
Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/use-local-whisper/SKILL.md · 155 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 155 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Use Local Whisper

Switches voice transcription from OpenAI's Whisper API to local whisper.cpp. Runs entirely on-device — no API key, no network, no cost.

Channel support: Currently WhatsApp only. The transcription module (src/transcription.ts) uses Baileys types for audio download. Other channels (Telegram, Discord, etc.) would need their own audio-download logic before this skill can serve them.

Note: The Homebrew package is whisper-cpp, but the CLI binary it installs is whisper-cli.

Prerequisites

  • voice-transcription skill must be applied first (WhatsApp channel)
  • macOS with Apple Silicon (M1+) recommended
  • whisper-cpp installed: brew install whisper-cpp (provides the whisper-cli binary)
  • ffmpeg installed: brew install ffmpeg
  • A GGML model file downloaded to data/models/

Phase 1: Pre-flight

Check if already applied

Check if src/transcription.ts already uses whisper-cli:

grep 'whisper-cli' src/transcription.ts && echo "Already applied" || echo "Not applied"

If already applied, skip to Phase 3 (Verify).

Check dependencies are installed

whisper-cli --help >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo "WHISPER_OK" || echo "WHISPER_MISSING"
ffmpeg -version >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo "FFMPEG_OK" || echo "FFMPEG_MISSING"

If missing, install via Homebrew:

brew install whisper-cpp ffmpeg

Check for model file

ls data/models/ggml-*.bin 2>/dev/null || echo "NO_MODEL"

If no model exists, download the base model (148MB, good balance of speed and accuracy):

mkdir -p data/models
curl -L -o data/models/ggml-base.bin "https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/ggml-base.bin"

For better accuracy at the cost of speed, use ggml-small.bin (466MB) or ggml-medium.bin (1.5GB).

Phase 2: Apply Code Changes

Ensure WhatsApp fork remote

git remote -v

If whatsapp is missing, add it:

git remote add whatsapp https://github.com/qwibitai/claudeclaw-whatsapp.git

Read the full file on GitHub · 155 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 155 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A cebfd5282209

Subscribe to this mod's changes

use-local-whisper is a skill published in the GitHub repository sbusso/claudeclaw (192 stars, last pushed 28d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 1,370 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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