About Dictalus

Dictalus is made by Varsalus, Inc. It was built by Art Morales, who needed it first.

Why I built it

I'm Art, a scientist who spent 25 years presenting research and still watched the perfect answer show up five minutes after the meeting ended.

The pattern that finally made me build this: I answered closed questions with open lectures. "Will it be ready by Friday?" is a yes-or-no question, and I gave it three paragraphs of methodology. Every time. Knowing the material was never the problem. Delivery is a motor skill, and I had spent zero minutes training it.

So Dictalus is a gym, not a course. You get a prompt, record a short take, and get numbers: words per minute, fillers per minute, deliberate pauses, pitch variation in semitones (so "you sound monotone" is finally falsifiable), and a segment-by-segment arc of your certainty and tone: where you committed and where you slid into "sort of, I think, maybe." Then one fix. Then you run it back.

I wrote the longer version on Medium: The perfect answer always shows up five minutes late.

How we treat your voice

• By default your audio is deleted the moment scoring finishes. We keep the transcript and your scores, and you can delete those too, any time.
• The live meter runs entirely on your device. No audio is recorded or leaves your phone.
• No ads. Your data is never sold, and we do not use it to train third-party AI models.

The details are in the privacy policy.

Free is real

5 scored reps every day, forever, with the full scorecard, the guided curriculum, trends, and streaks. No card to start. Pro is $8.99/month or $59.99/year and removes the daily cap.

The company

Dictalus is a product of Varsalus, Inc. (its other apps). Questions, bugs, or a page that's out of date: support@dictalus.com.

Art on LinkedIn and Medium.