Formatting models — Standard, Thinking, Sprecho 5

What the three Sprecho formatting models do, how the speed-versus-polish trade-off works, and how to pick a different one for email than for chat.

Updated August 23, 20263 min read
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Sprecho ships three formatting models, and you choose which one runs for each type of app. That is the difference between a WhatsApp message that still sounds like you and an email that reads like you took ten minutes over it.

You set them on the Models page in the sidebar. The choice applies to every dictation from that device.

The three models

Model Tagline What it does
Standard Faithful cleanup Keeps your wording exactly as you said it and cleans up punctuation, layout and lists
Thinking Rewrites for quality Rewrites your sentences and lifts the quality of the text without changing what you meant
Sprecho 5 Previous generation The model Sprecho used before, kept for people who prefer it

Standard is the everyday choice. It removes fillers, adds punctuation and capitals, breaks the text into paragraphs and turns spoken lists into bullets — but it does not touch a single content word. What you said is what you get.

Thinking does all of that and then edits. It fixes grammar (agreement, case, tense, word order), splits run-on "and… and… and" chains into short sentences, and writes a doubled hedge once instead of twice. Every fact, name, number and condition stays exactly as spoken. It takes a moment longer, and on a two-line chat message that moment buys you nothing.

Sprecho 5 is the outgoing generation, badged Legacy in the app. It is still selectable so no workflow breaks overnight, but it will be retired.

Neither Standard nor Thinking is an assistant. Neither one answers your text, summarises it, or adds a heading you did not dictate. Thinking edits the wording; it never edits the substance.

How to change the model for an app

  1. Open Sprecho and click Models in the sidebar.
  2. Pick the tab for the kind of app you want to change: Personal messages, Work messages, Email, Code or Other. The banner above the cards shows which apps that tab covers.
  3. Click the model card you want. The tick appears immediately and the change applies to your next dictation — there is nothing to save and no restart.

Repeat per tab. There is no global switch, by design: the right answer for Slack is rarely the right answer for Outlook.

The shipped defaults

App category Default model
Personal messages Standard
Work messages Standard
Email Thinking
Code Standard
Other Standard

Email is the one category that defaults to Thinking, because long-form prose is where the editing pass earns its keep. Everywhere else, faithful cleanup is what people expect — and it is faster.

The card carrying the Recommended badge is the default for the tab you are looking at, so you can always see what you have moved away from.

Speed versus polish

Standard finishes sooner because it does less. Thinking reads the whole dictation, decides what actually needs editing, and rewrites only that — and if your dictation was already clean, it hands it back with nothing but punctuation and layout changed.

A useful rule:

  • Under three sentences, or a chat window → Standard.
  • An email, a report, a document someone else will read → Thinking.
  • A code editor or terminal → Standard, so your identifiers survive intact. Pair it with Vibe Coding so the recogniser knows your variable names.

If an older device is still on Sprecho 5

Sprecho versions released before the Models page send no model preference at all, and the server used to answer that with Sprecho 5. Updating the app moves that device onto the current generation automatically — you do not need to pick anything.

If you deliberately want Sprecho 5 on an updated app, select it on the Models page. That choice is respected until the model is retired.

Related: How Sprecho formats what you say and Set a writing style per app.

Frequently asked questions

Standard keeps your wording exactly as you said it and only cleans up punctuation, layout and lists. Thinking rewrites your sentences for readability and grammar without changing your meaning, and takes a moment longer.

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