Add Decktation to Plugin Store

[silverfoxy]

Add Decktation to Plugin Store

Decktation is a push to talk voice to text plugin for Steam Deck. It records speech using a configurable button combo, transcribes it locally via faster-whisper model and types the result into the active game or application.

The plugin includes presets for World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and a generic text input. The game presets can open chat, recognize channel names (party -> /p) and send the message to the appropriate channels. Users can customize the button combo, select different model sizes (larger models for better accuracy but slower transcription), different languages (as supported by the Whisper model), and a few miscellaneous options such as typing the text but waiting for the user to press enter. Or showing the preview text as a toast message allowing the user to cancel the message before sending it.

The plugin bundles its Python dependencies and ydotool helper (to type) so users do not need sudo or to manually install any system packages (the original version required manual installation in desktop mode).

Link to repo: https://github.com/silverfoxy/decktation
Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1rcmjxb/decktation_deckyloader_voice_to_text_plugin_for/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGRD6njtbNI
Blog post (Installation has been streamlined since writing this blog post): https://imsilverfoxy.com/posts/decktation-voice-to-text-for-wow-on-steamdeck/

Task Checklist

Developer

• I am the original author or an authorized maintainer of this plugin.
• I have abided by the licenses of the libraries I am utilizing, including attaching license notices where appropriate.
• Generative AI was NOT used to write a majority of the code I am submitting.

I have used Claude code and Codex to research existing approaches for ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), benchmark CPU-based models that can run on Steam deck, PoC and test my plugin, and fix bugs. I have actively maintained and supported Decktation in the past 6 months through feature additions based on requests from Reddit users as well as bug fixes as evident by the Reddit threads activity. I fully designed the architecture and inner workings of my plugin and I am capable and willing to support the plugin for the foreseeable future.

Plugin

• I have verified that my plugin works properly on the Stable and Beta update channels of SteamOS.
• I have verified my plugin is unique or provides more/alternative functionality to a plugin already on the store.

Currently decky store lists decky-dictation, a voice to text plugin that uses the Vosk transcription model and has not been updated for over 2 years. Although Decky Dictation (https://github.com/antiquitte/decky-dictation) demonstrated the basic idea of speech to text on Steam Deck, Decktation is an independent implementation rather than a fork or direct continuation.

Decky Dictation and its predecessor were the main motivation for me to build Decktation. But I changed the underlying speech recognition model to a modern ASR model (Whisper), and added numerous features and configurations. Decktation owns the complete speech pipeline instead of acting as a launcher for an external dictation program. Decktation records and normalizes audio itself, runs faster-whisper through the optimized CTranslate2 engine using CPU int8 inference, and manages transcription results before deciding where and how to type them. As a result I would not consider them the same plugin.

Backend

• No: I am using a custom backend other than Python.
• Yes: I am using a tool or software from a 3rd party FOSS project that does not have it's dependencies statically linked.
• No: I am using a custom binary that has all of it's dependencies statically linked.

Community

• I have tested and left feedback on two other pull requests for new or updating plugins.
• I have commented links to my testing report in this PR.

I will update this section once I test existing plugins. As a side note, the current state of documentation around testing is confusing. The repo's readme links to the SDH tracker dashboard that shows no plugins available for test. The test channel inside decky loader lists plugins that are not among the open PRs on Github. My understanding is that Discord is the source of truth.

Testing

• Tested by a third party on SteamOS Preview update channel.

[github-actions]

Issues Found

• Both testing boxes are present in your description. Please remove one of them per the Markdown comment above the testing section.

Next Steps

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3. Once your description is correct, a maintainer will review your pull request as soon as possible.

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