Personal Voice Assistant
Hands-free Spotify control with intent recognition that actually holds up.
The code is private, but I'm happy to walk you through it. Say hi.
At a glance
- Role
- Solo build
- Timeline
- May to Jul 2024
- Status
- Complete
- Stack
- full playback control
- Hands-free
- intent-based, not keyword-matched
- NLP
Overview
A voice assistant for Spotify built around intent recognition rather than rigid command matching.
This was the project where speech stopped being a gimmick to me. The gap between "transcribes words" and "understands what you meant" is the entire engineering problem, and it is where every voice interface lives or dies.
The problem
Keyword-matched voice control breaks the moment you phrase something naturally. "Play the album" and "put on that record" mean the same thing, and a command table cannot cover the space.
What I built
- Speech-to-text pipeline feeding a Gemini-backed intent classifier rather than a fixed command table.
- NLP intent recognition mapping varied natural phrasing onto a small set of reliable Spotify actions.
- Execution layer against the Spotify API with graceful handling of ambiguous requests.
Notes
Things that surprised me, or that I got wrong first.
Intent over keywords
Mapping many phrasings onto a few actions is what makes a voice interface feel like it works. The classifier absorbs the variation so the execution layer can stay small and predictable.
Say hi
If you want to talk about Personal Voice Assistant, or anything on this page, I'd love to hear from you. Email me or use the contact page.