---
title: "Symon"
description: "o8's voice operator — talk to o8 and it talks back, takes action by voice, and still stops for your yes on anything irreversible."
canonical_url: https://o8.run/docs/symon
md_url: https://o8.run/docs/symon.md
last_updated: 2026-06-25
version: "0.1.431"
stability: beta
---

# 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.

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](/docs/dictation).