Custom Words
Hint the recognizer toward names and terms it would otherwise miss.
Custom Words are recognition hints. They're passed to the Whisper model as an "initial prompt" to nudge it toward names, jargon, and product terms it might otherwise mishear.
When to use
Add words the model keeps getting wrong — people's names, company and product names, technical terms, acronyms.
How it works
Custom Words bias recognition; they are best-effort, not guaranteed. The model is more likely to produce a hinted spelling, but it may still vary, especially for a Japanese reading that should map to an English spelling.
If a term must come out exactly a certain way every time, don't rely on Custom Words — use Replacements, which are deterministic.
Custom Words vs Replacements
| Custom Words | Replacements | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Hints the recognizer | Substitutes text after transcription |
| Reliability | Best-effort | Deterministic |
| Best for | Helping the model hear a term | Forcing an exact spelling |
The two are separate screens and work together: hint with Custom Words, enforce with Replacements.