CLI

The vaak command is installed with the package. Run vaak --help or vaak <command> --help for the built-in reference.

vaak transcribe

vaak transcribe clip.mp3 --model faster-whisper:small --language hi [--json]

Flag	Default	Meaning
FILE	required	Any audio or video file ffmpeg can decode
--model	$VAAK_MODEL or faster-whisper:small	Model spec, see model specs
--language	auto-detect	ISO 639-1 code: hi, en, …
--device	$VAAK_DEVICE or auto	auto, cpu or cuda
--json	off	Print the full Transcript as JSON instead of plain text

Plain output is the transcript text. JSON output has the fields text, language, segments, duration, rtf, backend, model.

Multiple files:

for f in *.wav; do vaak transcribe "$f" --json > "${f%.wav}.json"; done

Weights load once per process, so for many files the Python API or the server is faster.

vaak serve

vaak serve --model faster-whisper:small --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Flag	Default	Meaning
--model	$VAAK_MODEL or faster-whisper:small	Model loaded at startup
--host	$VAAK_HOST or 127.0.0.1	Bind address
--port	$VAAK_PORT or 8000	Port
--device	$VAAK_DEVICE or auto	auto, cpu or cuda

Starts the FastAPI app from vaak/server/app.py. Routes are documented in the HTTP API guide. Interactive docs are at /docs once it is running.

vaak models

vaak models

Lists every registered backend with its spec prefix, whether its runtime is importable in the current environment, and example model ids. Use it to check that an extra installed correctly.

vaak bench

vaak bench --models faster-whisper:small,indic-conformer:hi --datasets fleurs-hi,fleurs-en --limit 200

Flag	Meaning
--models	Comma-separated model specs
--datasets	Comma-separated dataset keys: fleurs-hi, fleurs-en, cv-hi, kathbath-hi
--limit	Number of utterances per dataset. Default evaluates the full test split

Evaluates every (model, dataset) pair and writes bench/results/<timestamp>.json. A model that does not support the dataset language (for example parakeet:* on fleurs-hi) is skipped. cv-hi needs a Hugging Face token in HF_TOKEN because Common Voice is gated. See the benchmarks page for the schema and methodology.

Environment variables

VAAK_MODEL, VAAK_DEVICE, VAAK_HOST, VAAK_PORT and VAAK_COMPUTE_TYPE set defaults for the flags above. See configuration.