vikhyat · Sep 1, 2026 · Sep 1, 2026 · Sep 1, 2026
diff --git a/docs/overview.md b/docs/overview.md
@@ -9,8 +9,9 @@ title: "Overview"
 Moondream is an open-weight family of Vision Language Models (VLMs) built for powerful, efficient visual reasoning. The Moondream 3 family uses a mixture-of-experts architecture with grounded visual reasoning, a 32k context window, and native support for multiple vision skills—like pointing, counting, and object detection—all designed with a deployment-friendly ethos.
 
 For local inference, [Photon](/running-locally) exposes Moondream, Qwen, Gemma,
-and Whisper models through the Moondream Python package. For hosted inference,
-choose a model through the [Cloud API quickstart](./quickstart).
+and speech-to-text models including Whisper, Qwen3-ASR, and Parakeet through
+the Moondream Python package. For hosted inference, choose a model through the
+[Cloud API quickstart](./quickstart).
 
 ### Key stats
 

diff --git a/docs/quickstart.md b/docs/quickstart.md
@@ -344,7 +344,7 @@ console.log(result.caption);
 
 Want to run models on your own hardware instead of using the Cloud API? Start
 with the [Photon local inference guide](/running-locally), or use
-[Whisper speech transcription](/transcription) on a supported NVIDIA GPU.
+[Photon speech transcription](/transcription) on a supported NVIDIA GPU.
 
 ## Next Steps
 

diff --git a/docs/running-locally.md b/docs/running-locally.md
@@ -9,9 +9,10 @@ description: High-performance local inference with Photon on NVIDIA GPUs and App
 
 Photon is Moondream's high-performance local inference engine for NVIDIA GPUs
 (Linux x86_64 / aarch64 or Windows AMD64) and Apple Silicon Macs. It supports
-Moondream, Qwen, and Gemma vision-language models, plus Whisper speech
-transcription on NVIDIA GPUs. Photon provides custom CUDA and Metal kernels,
-automatic batching, paged KV caching, and prefix caching.
+Moondream, Qwen, and Gemma vision-language models, plus automatic speech
+recognition (ASR) with Whisper, Qwen3-ASR, and Parakeet on NVIDIA GPUs. Photon
+provides custom CUDA and Metal kernels, automatic batching, paged KV caching,
+and prefix caching.
 
 ## Requirements
 
@@ -96,25 +97,34 @@ qwen = md.photon("Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B")
 gemma = md.photon("google/gemma-4-E2B-it")
 
 # Whisper large-v3-turbo (NVIDIA GPU)
-speech = md.photon("openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo")
+whisper = md.photon("openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo")
+
+# Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (NVIDIA GPU)
+qwen_asr = md.photon("Qwen/Qwen3-ASR-0.6B")
+
+# Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (NVIDIA GPU)
+parakeet = md.photon("nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3")
 ```
 
 | Family | Supported models |
 |--------|----------------|
 | Moondream | Moondream 2, Moondream 3 Preview, Moondream 3.1 9B A2B |
 | Qwen 3.5 | 0.8B, 2B, 4B, 9B, 27B, and 35B-A3B; base variants where published |
 | Qwen 3.6 | 27B and 35B-A3B; BF16 and FP8 checkpoints |
-| Gemma 4 | E2B, E4B, and 31B base and instruction variants |
+| Gemma 4 | E2B, E4B, 26B-A4B, and 31B base and instruction variants |
 | Whisper | Whisper large-v3-turbo transcription and English translation |
+| Qwen3-ASR | 0.6B and 1.7B transcription with optional forced-alignment word timestamps |
+| Parakeet TDT | 0.6B v3 transcription with native word timestamps |
 
 Use `md.photon_models()` to list the exact identifiers registered by the
 installed release. Models expose `model.tasks` and `model.supports(task)` so
 applications can discover their capabilities; not every model implements every
 Moondream-specific skill.
 
-Whisper currently runs through Photon's CUDA path on supported NVIDIA GPUs.
-See [Speech Transcription](/transcription) for files, progressive results, live
-PCM, translation, and timestamps.
+Speech-to-text models currently run through Photon's CUDA path on supported
+NVIDIA GPUs. See [Speech Transcription](/transcription) for model-specific
+language, prompt, translation, and timestamp support, plus files, progressive
+results, and live PCM.
 
 Model weights are automatically downloaded from Hugging Face on first run and cached locally.
 

diff --git a/docs/transcription.md b/docs/transcription.md
@@ -2,26 +2,47 @@
 id: transcription
 slug: transcription
 title: Speech Transcription
-description: Transcribe and translate files or live PCM with Photon and Whisper
+description: Transcribe files or live PCM with Photon's Whisper, Qwen3-ASR, and Parakeet models
 ---
 
 # Speech Transcription
 
-Photon serves `openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo` through the Moondream Python
-package on supported NVIDIA GPUs. It handles long-form files, progressive
-transcripts, live mono PCM, English translation, and segment or word
-timestamps.
+Photon serves four speech-to-text checkpoints through the same model-bound
+`transcribe` interface on supported NVIDIA GPUs:
+
+- `openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo`
+- `Qwen/Qwen3-ASR-0.6B`
+- `Qwen/Qwen3-ASR-1.7B`
+- `nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3`
+
+All four handle long-form files, progressive transcripts, live mono PCM, and
+segment timestamps. Each also offers word timestamps within model-specific
+limits. Language, prompting, translation, and timestamp behavior varies by
+model.
 
 ## Installation
 
-Install Moondream 2.1 or newer:
+Install Moondream 2.1.1 or newer:
 
 ```bash
-pip install --upgrade "moondream>=2.1"
+pip install --upgrade "moondream>=2.1.1"
 ```
 
-Photon downloads the Whisper checkpoint from Hugging Face on first use and
-caches it locally. Local Photon models do not require a Moondream API key.
+Photon downloads the selected checkpoint from Hugging Face on first use and
+caches it locally. Qwen3-ASR also downloads its forced aligner when word
+timestamps are requested. Local Photon models do not require a Moondream API
+key.
+
+## Choose a model
+
+| Capability | Whisper large-v3-turbo | Qwen3-ASR | Parakeet TDT |
+|------------|------------------------|-----------|--------------|
+| Language | Automatic or forced | Automatic or forced | Automatic; code not reported |
+| English translation | Yes | No | No |
+| Initial prompt | Yes | Yes | No |
+| Segment timestamps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
+| Word timestamps | Alignment | Forced alignment | Native token durations |
+| Sampling controls | Temperature fallback | Temperature and top-p | Deterministic |
 
 ## Transcribe a file
 
@@ -31,7 +52,7 @@ from pathlib import Path
 import moondream as md
 
 
-with md.photon("openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo") as speech:
+with md.photon("Qwen/Qwen3-ASR-0.6B") as speech:
     result = speech.transcribe(
         audio=Path("meeting.m4a"),
         timestamps="word",
@@ -66,9 +87,10 @@ with md.photon("openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo") as speech:
 
 ## Translate to English
 
-Set `task="translate"` to translate non-English speech into English. Use
-`language` when the source language is known, or omit it for automatic language
-detection.
+Whisper alone supports English translation. Set `task="translate"` to translate
+non-English speech into English. Use `language` when the source language is
+known, or omit it for automatic language detection. Qwen3-ASR and Parakeet
+reject translation requests.
 
 ```python
 from pathlib import Path
@@ -167,21 +189,28 @@ async def final_transcript(audio_chunks):
 
 ## Options
 
-Arguments are passed directly to the selected Photon model:
+Arguments are passed directly to the selected Photon model. Unsupported
+model-specific options fail with a clear error instead of being ignored:
 
 | Argument | Default | Description |
 |----------|---------|-------------|
 | `audio` | Required | Encoded audio, raw PCM, or an asynchronous live PCM iterator |
 | `sample_rate` | None | Required for raw or live PCM; do not set for encoded audio |
-| `language` | Automatic | Source language code such as `"en"` or `"es"` |
-| `task` | `"transcribe"` | Use `"translate"` for English translation |
-| `timestamps` | `"segment"` | `"none"`, `"segment"`, or `"word"` |
-| `initial_prompt` | None | Text context for names or domain-specific vocabulary |
-| `condition_on_previous_text` | `True` | Carry bounded text context between long-form windows |
+| `language` | Automatic | Source language code such as `"en"` or `"es"`; Whisper and Qwen3-ASR only |
+| `task` | `"transcribe"` | Use `"translate"` for English translation with Whisper only |
+| `timestamps` | `"segment"` | `"none"`, `"segment"`, or `"word"`; implementation varies by model |
+| `initial_prompt` | None | Text context for names or vocabulary; Whisper and Qwen3-ASR only |
+| `condition_on_previous_text` | `True` | Carry bounded context; Whisper and Qwen3-ASR only |
 | `clip_start_seconds` | `0.0` | Start offset for an encoded source |
 | `clip_end_seconds` | Source end | Exclusive end offset for an encoded source |
 | `stream` | `False` | Return progressive transcript snapshots |
-| `settings` | None | Sampling settings such as `temperature` and `max_tokens` |
+| `settings` | None | Model-specific decode bounds and sampling settings |
+
+Qwen3-ASR word timestamps use forced alignment for Chinese, Cantonese,
+English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, and
+Japanese. Use segment or no timestamps for its other transcription languages.
+Parakeet detects language implicitly and returns `language: null`; it does not
+accept language forcing, prompts, translation, temperature, or top-p.
 
 Live PCM does not accept clip ranges. For encoded bytes and binary streams,
 Photon snapshots at most 64 MiB before incremental decoding. Use an asynchronous
@@ -193,13 +222,14 @@ sessions are limited to 24 hours.
 The final dictionary includes:
 
 - `text`: the complete transcript or English translation;
-- `language`: the detected or requested source language;
+- `language`: the detected or requested source language, or `None` for Parakeet;
 - `task`: `"transcribe"` or `"translate"`;
 - `segments`: timestamped segments, with `words` when requested;
 - source, clip, and decode diagnostic fields.
 
-Word entries include `word`, `start`, `end`, and `probability`. All timestamps
-are in seconds relative to the source audio.
+Word entries include `word`, `start`, and `end`, plus `probability` when the
+selected model reports it. All timestamps are in seconds relative to the source
+audio.
 
 For vision-language models and supported hardware, see
 [Run Moondream Locally](/running-locally).