meeting-assistant/docs/adr/0002-use-faster-whisper.md

ADR 0002: Use faster-whisper for Transcription

Status

Superseded by ADR 0011

Context

The project requires high-quality speech-to-text transcription for German and English meetings.

The transcription component should support local execution where practical and should remain replaceable in the future. The project should not depend on a meeting bot or on a proprietary meeting platform.

Decision

The project will use faster-whisper as the initial transcription engine.

The preferred first model is large-v3-turbo, with large-v3 as quality-oriented fallback if required.

Consequences

• Transcription can run locally on suitable hardware.
• NVIDIA CUDA acceleration can be used later on an office AI PC.
• The transcription module must hide the concrete engine behind an internal interface.
• Model name, language setting, timestamp and engine version should be stored with every transcript.
• The decision can be revisited if another engine provides clearly better quality, speed or deployment characteristics.