ViewSym Audio Assistant

ViewSym Audio Assistant is a Chrome extension that captures live audio from any browser tab, transcribes it in real-time using Whisper tiny, and provides an AI chat interface (Flan-T5 base) to ask questions about the transcription. Built with Manifest V3.

Features

• Real-Time Transcription — captures tab audio and transcribes with Whisper tiny in 5s chunks (configurable via settings)
• AI Chat — ask questions, request summaries, or extract action items from the transcript
• Adjustable chunk size — control latency vs. accuracy tradeoff (1s–15s)
• Settings dropdown — full-width panel with model status and export

Installation (Developer Mode)

1. Clone or download this repository.
2. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/.
3. Enable Developer mode.
4. Click Load unpacked and select the viewsym-ext directory.

Usage

1. Open a tab with audio (YouTube, meeting, podcast, etc.).
2. Open the ViewSym side panel (click the extension icon or use the keyboard shortcut).
3. Click Start in the panel header to begin capture.
4. View the live transcript and ask questions in the Ask Assistant section.
5. Click Stop when done.

Settings

Click the gear icon in the header to open the settings dropdown:

• Model status — shows Whisper tiny (transcription) and Flan-T5 base (chat) load state
• Chunk Size — slider (1000–15000ms) to control how often audio is transcribed; larger = more accurate, smaller = lower latency
• Download transcript — exports the full transcript as a .txt file

Architecture

• Service Worker (background.js) — ensures offscreen document is alive, relays messages
• Offscreen Document (offscreen.html / offscreen.js) — captures tab audio via MediaRecorder, transcribes chunks with Whisper tiny via Hugging Face Transformers.js
• Side Panel (sidepanel.html / sidepanel.js) — UI with transcript view, chat interface, and settings

Permissions

• sidePanel — render UI alongside web content
• storage — persist chunk size preference
• tabCapture — capture audio from the active tab
• activeTab — interact with the current tab
• offscreen — run a hidden document for audio processing

License

MIT