Symon
o8's voice operator — talk to o8 and it talks back, takes action by voice, and still stops for your yes on anything irreversible.
The product files tracked by this page changed after o8 v0.1.431. Use this as a dated reference while the current documentation is refreshed.
Symon is o8's voice operator — you talk to o8, it talks back, and it can take real actions on your Mac and inside o8 by voice. It's a distinct surface from the orchestrator: where the orchestrator dispatches the coding fleet and gates merges, Symon is the fast, hands-free plane you drive the room from. macOS only.
The rule that makes voice safe: Symon never gets a private back door around governance. Every action with a side effect runs through the same approval gate as everything else in o8.
Talking to it
Two ways to converse, and they differ under the hood:
- Push-to-talk (the default, shipped). Hold a key, speak a request, release. Symon runs a fast reasoning loop, takes the action or answers, and speaks the result back. Conversational in feel, turn-based in mechanism.
- Realtime voice-to-voice (opt-in). A continuous mode where your speech and Symon's stream live, with the same native tools bridged in behind the same gate. It's a secondary track you turn on — a free local default with an opt-in realtime mode — not what runs out of the box.
Either way, the tools and the safety gate are identical. A destructive action spoken into a live conversation still stops for your yes.
Talking back
Symon speaks — confirmations, results, and answers read aloud. Out of the box it uses the built-in macOS voice (no key, no network); higher-quality voices light up only if you configure them. It works two directions: you ask it a question by voice and it answers (in the floating dock as text, and spoken back), and when it wants to do something that needs your go-ahead, it speaks the proposed action and waits for your confirmation.
The governance posture
Voice can observe and act on low-risk things freely, but the irreversible stuff always stops for a yes. Symon sorts every action into three tiers:
| Tier | Examples | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Read-only | search, list, read, open an app | runs on its own, no prompt |
| Reversible | create a reminder, event, or note | confirmed by default |
| Destructive / high-impact | send mail, delete, run a Shortcut — and on the code plane, merges, pushes, migrations, spend | always raises a confirmation card; you can't suppress it |
Two fail-safes back this up: anything Symon doesn't recognize is treated as destructive (it asks), and a hard never-do list — shell, sudo, keychain, credentials, secrets, system paths — is refused outright, not even gated. For a gated action it speaks the proposal, shows an Allow/Cancel card, and waits; no answer within the window means declined.
Direct your work by voice — and the irreversible stuff still stops for your yes. Voice inherits o8's "nothing merges unreviewed" gate; it doesn't route around it.
For the hands-free text-input and command grammar, see Dictation & say-commands.