Development Setup

Prerequisites

Contributor setup requirements:

• macOS 13+
• Xcode 26+ (Swift 6.2+)
• Homebrew
• xcodegen
• cmake

Install tools:

brew install xcodegen cmake

Repository Setup

Clone repository and build transcription dependency:

git clone https://github.com/Ankit-Cherian/steno.git
cd steno
git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp vendor/whisper.cpp
cd vendor/whisper.cpp
git checkout v1.8.3
cmake -B build && cmake --build build --config Release
./models/download-ggml-model.sh small.en
cd ../..

Project Generation

Generate Xcode project from declarative config:

xcodegen generate

Important:

• do not manually edit Steno.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj
• update project.yml, then regenerate

Open project and set your own team in Signing and Capabilities.

Developer Workflow

Recommended loop:

1. make focused change in StenoKit or Steno
2. run relevant tests in StenoKit
3. run app in Xcode and manually validate target flow
4. confirm permission-sensitive behavior if affected

For signing-sensitive changes, remember that TCC grants can reset when identity changes.