Feature: bind whisper.cpp Parakeet (NVIDIA) API

[jatinkrmalik]

Context

whisper.cpp added NVIDIA Parakeet support in June (ggml-org/whisper.cpp#3735, around v1.8.7 / v1.9.x). It is not another Whisper ggml file you pass to whisper_init_from_file. Upstream exposes a separate C API (parakeet.h) plus parakeet-cli.

Converted models live under ggml-org/parakeet-GGUF (for example ggml-parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-q8_0.bin).

Why I'm asking

I maintain Vocalinux, a Linux dictation app that uses pywhispercpp as the default engine. We got a feature request to offer Parakeet in Settings (vocalinux#527).

I tried to see if this was just a model-list change on our side. It isn't. pywhispercpp.Model only wraps the Whisper path, and the packaged whisper.cpp is still pre-Parakeet (1.4.1 ships ~1.8.2; 1.5.0 also predates the merge and still binds whisper_* only).

Request

Would you be open to:

1. Bumping the whisper.cpp submodule far enough to include Parakeet
2. Binding enough of parakeet.h for the common case: init/free, parakeet_full (or equivalent), segment text, threads / GPU knobs
3. Optionally a small high-level helper similar to Model.transcribe(), if that fits the project

I do not need every parakeet-cli flag on day one. Load model, run PCM float audio, get text back would already unblock us.

Notes

• Server support is not in whisper.cpp yet, so this is about the in-process API only.
• Happy to test a branch or pre-release wheel from our app and report back.

Thanks for maintaining the bindings. They already do a lot of heavy lifting for us.

[absadiki]

@jatinkrmalik, Thanks for the detailed write-up, and for letting me know that whisper.cpp added support for Parakeet!

I just had a look, and you're right. The Parakeet API lives in its own header (parakeet.h) rather than the existing Whisper API, which makes sense since it's a different model architecture.

Because of that, supporting Parakeet isn't as straightforward as just bumping the whisper.cpp submodule. It will require writing a separate set of C bindings for the Parakeet API.

From the Python side, I think we can probably keep a similar high-level interface to orchestrate both architectures, but under the hood they'd be backed by different native bindings.

I'll try to look into this when I get some free time. In the meantime, if you're interested in working on it, feel free to submit a PR, I'd be happy to review it and help get it merged.

[jatinkrmalik]

@absadiki thanks. Early draft is up: #172

Can you take a look at it and see if this is the right direction? I'm trying to follow your project conventions as per https://absadiki.github.io/pywhispercpp/.