Speech is Cheap (SIC) Skill

---
name: speech-is-cheap-sic-skill
description: Fast, accurate, and incredibly inexpensive automatic speech-to-text
  transcription service.
---

# Speech is Cheap (SIC) Skill

Fast, accurate, and incredibly inexpensive automatic speech-to-text transcription service.

## 🚀 Why use this skill?
- **Disruptive Pricing:** $0.06 - $0.12 per hour (2-15x cheaper than Deepgram or OpenAI).
- **Extreme Speed:** 100 minutes of audio transcribes in ~1 minute.
- **Multilingual:** Supports 100 languages with auto-detection.
- **Agent-Ready:** Designed for high-volume, automated pipelines.

## 🛠 Setup

### 1. Get an API Key
Sign up at [speechischeap.com](https://speechischeap.com). Use code `CH5` for $5 off.

### 2. Configure Authentication
This skill looks for your API key in the `SIC_API_KEY` environment variable.

Add this to your `.env` or agent config:
```bash
SIC_API_KEY=your_key_here
```

## 📖 Usage
### 🤖 TL;DR for Agents
When this skill is installed, you can transcribe any URL from an OpenClaw session and get the JSON results immediately by running:
`./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh transcribe --url "https://example.com/audio.mp3"`

### Transcribe a URL
```bash
# Basic transcription
./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh transcribe --url "https://example.com/audio.mp3"

# Advanced transcription with options
./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh transcribe --url "https://example.com/audio.mp3" \
  --speakers --words --labels \
  --language "en" \
  --format "srt" \
  --private
```

### Transcribe a Local File
Perfect for processing audio already on your disk. This handles the upload automatically.
```bash
# Upload and transcribe local media
./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh transcribe --file "./local-audio.wav"

# Upload with webhook callback
./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh transcribe --file "./local-audio.wav" --webhook "https://mysite.com/callback"

# Note: For local files, the skill handles the multi-part upload to
# https://upload.speechischeap.com before starting the transcription.
```

### Supported Options
- `--speakers`: Enable speaker diarization
- `--words`: Enable word-level timestamps
- `--labels`: Enable audio labeling (music, noise, etc.)
- `--stream`: Enable streaming output
- `--private`: Do not store audio/transcript (privacy mode)
- `--language <code>`: ISO language code (e.g., 'en', 'es')
- `--confidence <float>`: Minimum confidence threshold (default 0.5)
- `--format <fmt>`: Output format (json, srt, vtt, webvtt)
- `--webhook <url>`: URL to receive job completion payload
- `--segment-duration <n>`: Segment duration in seconds (default 30)

### Check Job Status
```bash
./skills/asr/scripts/asr.sh status "job-id-here"
```

## 🤖 For Agents
The `asr.sh` command-line tool returns JSON by default when successful, making it easy to pipe into other tools or parse directly.

If the `SIC_API_KEY` is missing, the tool will provide a clear error message and a direct link to the signup page.