Audio Transcription

Use When

• The input is audio and the main job is speech-to-text, subtitle-ready timing, rough speech search, multilingual transcription, or durable transcript artifacts.
• Use video-transcription for video inputs and video-analysis for semantic video understanding.

Do Not Use When

• The task belongs to ideation, QA, or another released skill listed in the handoff section.
• Required inputs are missing and guessing would change the result.

Execution Boundary

• Hosted transcription runs through the public postplus media transcribe verb and is async. A submit records the run handle, current status, and completed artifacts when available.
• Pass a local path, HTTPS URL, existing PostPlus media reference, or data URI directly to --audio. The CLI validates and prepares local media before the single hosted submit.
• A higher-quality default model and a faster, cheaper variant are available; prefer the default when subtitle quality matters and use the cheaper variant for an explicit rough pass. The generated example below shows the default endpoint key.

Source And Path

• Supply the media duration so PostPlus can validate the request before it runs; a missing duration fails before submission.
• Request timestamps when the output will feed subtitles or edit decisions.
• Start with one source file or audio URL before larger batches.
• Keep internal requests, responses, manifests, normalized transcripts, and downloaded artifacts under .postplus/audio-transcription; keep final user-facing transcript exports outside .postplus.

Handoff

• If status is pending, return the manifest path, the output.data.id generation handle, and the poll command postplus media poll --handle <output.data.id> (waits in-command up to 45s per invocation; rerun while pending). Do not keep the conversation open just to poll.
• When completed, hand off downloaded artifacts and normalizedTranscriptPath to subtitle-packager if SRT/ASS is needed.

Stop Conditions

• Stop when required user intent, source evidence, or owned input artifacts are missing and guessing would change the result.
• If an owned CLI or script command fails, report the exact error and stop. Do not bypass the failure with metadata-only answers, readiness probing, local payload rewrites, alternate execution paths, or unpublished tools.

Public Command Boundary

• Choose the smallest matching command or workflow from the user input and run it directly.
• Readiness diagnostics: postplus doctor --skill audio-transcription.
• If an owned CLI or script command fails, report the exact error and stop. Do not bypass the failure with metadata-only answers, readiness probing, local payload rewrites, alternate execution paths, or unpublished tools.
• Use postplus media schema --json only when you need the full endpoint, flag, and enum contract or are repairing an unknown request shape.
• Run the hosted transcription job with the generated command below; do not use another execution interface.
• Pass the source directly through --audio; do not pre-upload it or construct a manual request object.

postplus media transcribe transcription \
  --audio ./reference.wav \
  --duration-seconds 1 \
  --wait \
  --output ./result.json

• If the CLI returns a quote-confirmation challenge, run postplus quote confirm --json --challenge-file <challenge.json> and retry with the returned token.