Vella 2.2.1

• Share Heimdall's model. Models… has a Parakeet v3 Ultra · from Heimdall row (greyed when Heimdall is not on your Mac). Choose it and dictation uses the copy Heimdall already has in memory, so the two apps hold one copy instead of two. If Heimdall is quit, busy, missing or stops answering, that dictation uses Vella's own Parakeet v3 Ultra (if you downloaded it; otherwise Vella offers Get, never a silent download), and Vella goes back to Heimdall's copy when it returns. Without Heimdall nothing changes. A new install with Heimdall present starts on this row; a model you already chose stays your choice. Files you transcribe go to Heimdall's copy too when your vocabulary would not apply to them (and always when Vella has no copy of its own). Your vocabulary list does not apply to Heimdall's copy; choose Vella's own Parakeet v3 Ultra if you need it for dictation.
• vella transcribe FILE needs no options. It detects the language, applies your vocabulary, uses your dictation model and prints plain text. When you need more: --language tr (a code or a name such as Turkish), --vocab "Kadıköy, Beşiktaş" (words for this file only), --no-vocab, --model nemotron (the start of a model's name is enough), --json (timed segments and what the model was given) and --srt/--vtt. vella --help shows just these; vella help all lists everything. Older spellings keep working.
• The language you ask for reaches the model. Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe, Whisper and Qwen3-ASR are told the language. Parakeet detects it itself: a language it knows is left to it, and one it does not know goes to a downloaded model that knows it (with no --model), or is refused with a clear message instead of being ignored.
• The API needs only the audio. language takes names and auto, vocabulary takes words to add (or false), model takes the start of a name, and prompt gives Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe context words (other models refuse it rather than drop it). Your vocabulary.json and dictation are never changed by a request.
• See what ran. --json (and the API's verbose_json) says which model, precision and path ran, the language applied, the exact instruction Nemotron got, how many vocabulary words were used, and any repetition it caught. vella status says why a model runs on plain MLX.
• Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe uses NVIDIA's recommended prompt. When it starts repeating one phrase, Vella stops it early, decodes that part again and, if needed, splits it at a pause, so the speech after the loop is kept; a loop that survives is cut to one copy and reported as a warning. On hard audio your vocabulary list no longer shows up in the text as a run of list words.
• Dictation returns to the fast path by itself. One failure used to keep a model on plain MLX until its files or macOS changed; now the next load tries the optimized path again, and only a model that fails three times stays on plain MLX.
• Settings survive going back. If you ever run an older Vella again (an update rolled back, or an older release reinstalled), settings it does not know are kept for when you return.

Install or update with scripts/install.sh from a checkout of this tag (see the README): it downloads this zip and checks it against SHA256SUMS before installing. To check the zip's build provenance:

gh attestation verify Vella-2.2.1-arm64.zip --repo TobyNoSkillSon/Vella

Signed with Vella's own certificate "Vella Release Signing" (SHA-1 2CA2587C8B85EF687E68950E405EC58CE31FC1C7), the same in every release. Microphone and Accessibility permissions carry over between releases signed with this pinned identity; the first migration from a development or other identity requires granting them again.