Quick one this week. I got ListLedger accepting items by voice. Say the word, the item lands on the list a second later, no phone needed. This started as a hands-full-in-the-kitchen itch and turned into a neat little weekend build.
Why it was harder than it should be
The obvious version is "add bread to my shopping list" with no app name in the middle. That used to be possible through the assistant's own lists feature, but that whole interface for third-party lists was retired a couple of years ago. So the only working path today is a custom skill with its own invocation name.
The trade-off is two extra words. You say "tell list ledger to add bread" instead of just "add bread". Slightly clumsier, but it works reliably, and reliable beats elegant for something you use with your hands full.
How it works
The phrase gets turned into a small request that hits a single function in the ListLedger backend, which writes the item straight onto the list. It handles the natural ways people actually talk:
- "add bread" puts one item on
- "add 2 bananas" keeps the quantity
- "add milk, eggs and bread" splits into three separate items, Oxford comma and all
ListLedger stores its data as a stream of events rather than a fixed table, so the voice add is just another event in the same flow as a tap in the app. The phone app rebuilds the list from those events, so an item added by voice shows up everywhere the household already syncs to.
The honest state of it
This is a personal experiment, not a shipped feature yet. It runs against my own list, locked down so only my own skill can talk to it. Before it could go out to everyone it needs a proper setup flow so each person links it to their own household, which is real work I have not done.
But the core thing works, and it is genuinely useful. It is exactly the kind of small, sharp feature that makes an app feel like it belongs in your life rather than just on your phone. If enough ListLedger users would want it, turning the experiment into a real feature moves up the list.
Numbers this week
- Apps live: 2 (GutLedger, ListLedger)
- Apps in testing: 1 (Odomo)
- Apps in dev: 2 (Inkframe, Settle)
- New this week: ListLedger voice input, working end to end