Create and tune a workspace
A workspace teaches InkSpoke your vocabulary, tone, and domain so your dictation comes out right for the app you're in. This page walks you through the 3-step creation wizard — the fastest way to a good workspace — and then the detail panel, where you tune everything by hand.
New to the idea? Start with What are workspaces? for the big picture, then come back here to build one.
The fast path: the creation wizard
Open Settings → Workspaces and choose create workspace. A modal wizard opens with three steps. You can skip any step, and there's an escape hatch to a blank custom workspace if you'd rather build from scratch.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ New workspace ✕ │
│ │
│ ●━━━━━━━━━●━━━━━━━━━○ │
│ 1 Purpose 2 Domain 3 Activation │
│ │
│ What will you use this workspace for? │
│ │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌────── ────┐ ┌──────────┐ │
│ │ Email │ │ Chat │ │ Coding │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ comments │ │
│ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │
│ │ Meeting │ │ Creative │ │ Voice- │ │
│ │ notes │ │ writing │ │ to-Text │ │
│ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ … more │
│ │
│ [ Switch to custom ] [ Skip ] [ Next → ] │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ──┘
As you make choices, the wizard does the setup for you: picking a Purpose adds tone and output-style knowledge, picking a Domain adds a domain-context note and seeds vocabulary, and Activation wires the workspace to the apps and sites where it should switch on.
Step 1 — Purpose
Purpose sets how your words should be shaped. Choosing one auto-adds a Tone Adjustment and an Output Style knowledge entry to the workspace.
| Purpose | Good for |
|---|---|
| Voice-to-Text | Verbatim capture — turns AI refinement off for this workspace (see the warning below). |
| Clear, well-structured email replies and drafts. | |
| Chat | Short, casual messages for Slack, Teams, Discord, and the like. |
| AI Prompting | Writing prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and other assistants. |
| Social Media | Punchy posts and captions. |
| Meeting Notes | Structured notes and action items. |
| Documentation | Reference docs, guides, and how-tos. |
| Creative Writing | Prose, fiction, scripts, and free-form drafting. |
| Customer-Facing | Polished, on-brand replies to customers. |
| Code Comments | Comments and short technical notes inside code. |
| Custom | Start with no preset and define the tone/style yourself. |
Picking Voice-to-Text sets the workspace's AI refinement disabled flag, so whenever this workspace is active your raw transcription is injected verbatim — no AI cleanup, no tone matching. That's exactly what you want for dictating code, exact quotes, or command-line input, but it means tone and output-style settings won't apply. You can turn refinement back on later in the detail panel's AI section.
Step 2 — Domain
Domain sets what world you're writing in. Choosing one adds a Domain Context knowledge entry and seeds a starter vocabulary of terms common to that field, so InkSpoke recognizes them and spells them correctly.
There are 18 domains:
| Software Engineering | Project Management | Legal |
| Healthcare | Finance | Marketing |
| Customer Support | Academic Research | Human Resources |
| Data Science | Product Management | Sales |
| Real Estate | Journalism | Education |
| Cybersecurity | DevOps | Accounting |
InkSpoke auto-composes the workspace name as "Purpose — Domain" (for example, Email — Legal or Meeting Notes — Product Management). Pick both steps and you get a clear, descriptive name for free.
Step 3 — Activation
Activation decides when this workspace switches on. This is what makes workspaces feel automatic: you tag the apps and websites where the workspace belongs, and smart matching turns it on when you dictate there.
You have three ways to add activation tags, plus a pin:
- Pick apps — open the app picker and select running or installed apps. Each one becomes a tag matched against the foreground window.
- Add a website by URL — paste a site address and InkSpoke auto-fetches the page's title
and uses it as the tag. So
https://mail.google.commight become a "Gmail" tag without you typing it. - Add a manual tag — type any word that appears in the target app's window title (for example
jiraornotion). - Pin this workspace — optionally flip the pin toggle so this workspace is always used, overriding smart matching until you unpin it.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ New workspace ✕ │
│ │
│ ●━━━━━━━━━●━━━━━━━━━● │
│ 1 Purpose 2 Domain 3 Activation │
│ │
│ Turn this workspace on for… │
│ │
│ [ + Pick apps ] [ + Add website URL ] [ + Add tag ] │
│ │
│ Tags: ⟨ Gmail ✕ ⟩ ⟨ Outlook ✕ ⟩ ⟨ mail ✕ ⟩ │
│ │
│ ☐ Pin this workspace (always use it) │
│ │
│ [ ← Back ] [ Skip ] [ Create ] │
└────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────┘
Every tag you add here is scored against the window title (primarily), then the app name, when InkSpoke decides which workspace to use. More specific tags win. See Smart matching and precedence for the full scoring rules.
When you press Create, the workspace lands in the grid with its Purpose/Domain entries, vocabulary, and tags already in place — ready to use, or to fine-tune below.
Fine-tuning: the detail panel
Click any card in the Workspaces grid to open its detail panel. This is where you adjust everything the wizard set up, add your own knowledge, and pin per-workspace models. The panel header holds the name, tags, and vocabulary; below that are three collapsible accordion sections and the knowledge-entry list.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Email — Legal ★ pin ⋯ (menu) │
│ Tags: ⟨ Gmail ⟩ ⟨ Outlook ⟩ ⟨ mail ⟩ [ edit ] │
│ Vocabulary: indemnify, force majeure, tort … [ edit ] │
│ │
│ ▸ Speech (language · ASR model) │
│ ▾ AI (text model · refinement on/off) │
│ ▸ Global Layer (personal context · vocabulary) │
│ │
│ Knowledge entries │
│ [TONE ADJUSTMENT] Formal, precise … ⋯ │
│ [OUTPUT STYLE] Full sentences, no filler … ⋯ │
│ [DOMAIN CONTEXT] Legal correspondence … ⋯ │
│ │
│ [ + Blank ] [ From clipboard ] [ Preset ] [ From file ] │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The three accordion sections
| Section | What you control |
|---|---|
| Speech | The workspace's preferred language and preferred ASR (speech-to-text) model — overrides your global speech settings while this workspace is active. |
| AI | The workspace's preferred text model for refinement, and whether AI refinement is disabled for this workspace (the flag the Voice-to-Text purpose sets). |
| Global Layer | Whether this workspace inherits, forces on, or forces off your Personal Context and global custom vocabulary. See Personal context and dictionaries. |
Per-workspace models and language
By default a workspace uses your global speech and text models. When a workspace has special needs, override them here:
- Preferred language (Speech section) — pin dictation to a language for this workspace, handy if one workspace is always in, say, Spanish.
- Preferred ASR model (Speech section) — use a different speech-to-text model just for this workspace.
- Preferred text model (AI section) — refine with a specific LLM here. When set, this model takes precedence over your global default for this workspace's dictations.
If a workspace pins its own text model, that model refines its dictation. If it doesn't, InkSpoke falls back to your global default model (as long as workspace-default refinement and the master AI Refinement switch are both on). Turn the master switch off anywhere and nothing gets refined. Full rules live in How refinement works.
Adding knowledge entries
Knowledge entries are the text InkSpoke folds into the refinement prompt. Each entry belongs to one
of four categories — Tone Adjustment, Output Style, Domain Context, or Custom
Instruction — and active entries are assembled into labeled [TONE ADJUSTMENT],
[OUTPUT STYLE], [DOMAIN CONTEXT], and [CUSTOM INSTRUCTIONS] sections for the model.
There are four ways to add one:
| Add method | What it does |
|---|---|
| Blank | Create an empty text entry and type the instruction yourself. |
| From clipboard | Paste whatever's on your clipboard straight into a new entry. |
| From preset | Insert a ready-made entry from InkSpoke's preset library. |
| From file | Import text from a document (see supported types below). |
Supported file types for import: .txt, .md, .markdown, .csv, .json, .xml, .yaml,
.yml, .log, and .pdf (text is extracted from PDFs automatically).
All active knowledge across the workspace is capped by a global max content limit (40,000 characters by default, adjustable at the top of the Workspaces page). If your entries exceed it, InkSpoke truncates at the last complete sentence and notes how much was omitted — so keep entries focused rather than dumping whole documents.
Managing a workspace
The detail panel header and the grid card's kebab (⋯) menu give you the lifecycle actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pin (★) | Always use this workspace, overriding smart matching, until you unpin it. |
| Set default | Make this the fallback workspace when nothing else matches. |
| Activate / Deactivate | An inactive workspace is ignored by matching (kept, but dormant). |
| Clone | Duplicate the workspace as a starting point for a variant. |
| Delete | Remove the workspace permanently. |
Deleting a workspace removes it and its knowledge entries for good. If you might want it back, clone it first or just deactivate it instead.
Power users
- Skip the wizard entirely. Choose Switch to custom on Step 1 for a blank workspace, then build tags, vocabulary, and knowledge by hand in the detail panel.
- Pin ≠ default. A pin forces one workspace on everywhere; a default only kicks in when smart matching finds nothing. Use pin for a focused work session, default as a safety net.
- Clone-and-tweak is faster than starting over. Duplicate a working Email — Legal into Email — Finance, then swap the domain vocabulary and one domain-context entry.
- Verbatim per app. Give a Voice-to-Text workspace a tag for your terminal or IDE so raw, unrefined dictation switches on automatically when you're coding.
Platform notes
The wizard and detail panel work the same on Windows, macOS, and Linux. What differs under the
hood is how InkSpoke reads the foreground window and app name for activation matching (Windows UI
Automation, macOS accessibility, Linux xdotool/xclip) — but you tag and tune workspaces
identically on every platform.
Next steps
- What are workspaces? — the concept and why they matter.
- Smart matching and precedence — how InkSpoke picks which workspace to use.
- Personal context and dictionaries — the Global Layer and your dictionary substitutions.
- How refinement works — what your workspace knowledge feeds into.