## 2026.9.20

### Highlights

- `distil-large-v3.5` is selectable on the faster-whisper lane (English only, about one WER point better than `turbo` at the same speed).
- Transparent brand marks, a circular badge, and Store/MSIX logos rendered from the brand SVG.
- ONNX Runtime moved to 1.30 for the CPU and CUDA lanes.
- `parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2` stays the English default after a head-to-head with `parakeet-unified-en-0.6b`; the evaluation is recorded in `docs/TRANSCRIPTION_PLAN.md`.
- The published npm `latest` package now carries the Python source, so `npx @arcforgelabs/dictate install` works on Linux on the stable channel.

### Changes

- `distil-large-v3.5` is selectable on the faster-whisper lane (English only, about one WER point better than `turbo` at the same speed).
- Transparent brand marks, a circular badge, and Store/MSIX logos rendered from the brand SVG.
- ONNX Runtime moved to 1.30 for the CPU and CUDA lanes. The CUDA lane now uses CUDA 13 runtime wheels and needs NVIDIA driver 580 or newer; on older drivers Parakeet falls back to CPU. `onnxruntime-directml` is capped at 1.24.x, the last published DirectML wheel.
- `onnx-asr` 0.12 and `pyannote.audio` 4.0.7.
- The desktop views follow the brand-book spacing and colour rules.
- `parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2` stays the English default after a head-to-head with `parakeet-unified-en-0.6b`; the evaluation is recorded in `docs/TRANSCRIPTION_PLAN.md`.

### Fixes

- The published npm `latest` package now carries the Python source, so `npx @arcforgelabs/dictate install` works on Linux on the stable channel.
- Documentation no longer describes the removed cloud, Pro, or API-key surfaces.

### Complete contribution record

This audited record covers the complete 80c82fe3be0377293d6bb698fa6923023d63d49a..74121b7bfa989c4ce0bfbd162d65e6ffc3237d13 history: 6 in-range PRs + 0 retained seed-only PRs = 6 unique PRs. The generation manifest also supplies direct commits as editorial input; the grouped notes above prioritize user impact.

#### Pull requests

- **PR #50**
- **PR #44**
- **PR #42**
- **PR #51**
- **PR #52**
- **PR #53**