Short answer: click into any Basecamp field (Message Board, To-do notes, Campfire, Pings, Check-in reply), press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux), say what you'd say in a meeting, press the hotkey again. AICHE drops clean text into Basecamp's Trix editor. You hit Send.
The Problem
Basecamp's whole bet is that written, async communication beats meetings and Slack pings. The Message Board replaces email threads. Automatic Check-ins replace standups. Pings replace tap-on-the-shoulder. Campfire is for chatter, not decisions.
That model only works if people actually write the long posts. In practice, most teams degrade Basecamp into bullet fragments: "Worked on API. Fixed bug. Reviewed PR." Those answers inform nobody. The Message Board sits empty because composing a proper Heartbeat or Pitch takes 15-20 minutes of typing, and nobody has 15-20 minutes.
Voice closes that gap. You explain things the way you would in person, and the post writes itself.
What Changes
Speaking runs around 150 WPM. Typing runs around 40 WPM. A 300-word Message Board post that takes 12 minutes to type takes about 2 minutes to say. The quality usually improves, because you stop pre-editing in your head and just talk through the situation.
The workflow:
- Open Basecamp (web, Mac app, or Windows app).
- Click into the field you want to fill: New Message on the Message Board, a to-do's notes, a Campfire line, a Ping, or a Check-in answer.
- Press ⌃+⌥+R on Mac or Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows/Linux.
- Say the whole thing. Background, decision, what changes, what you need from people.
- Press the hotkey again. AICHE transcribes, cleans up filler, and inserts text at the cursor.
- Use Basecamp's toolbar to add bold or headings if you want. Hit Send.
Message Board Posts That Replace Meetings
The Message Board's categories (Announcement, FYI, Pitch, Question, Heartbeat) only earn their keep when the posts inside them are real writing. A Heartbeat with three bullets is just a status email. A Heartbeat that walks through what shipped, what slipped, and what's next is the kind of post that lets your manager skip a check-in meeting.
Dictating works well here because Basecamp posts are paragraph-shaped, not Slack-shaped. Pace around, explain the week the way you would to a colleague at lunch, stop talking. Enable AICHE's text cleanup (called Message Ready in some workflows) to strip "um," "you know," and false starts, and to add paragraph breaks where you naturally paused.
Lead with the conclusion. Basecamp posts are read in email-style notification digests, so put the bottom line in the first sentence and let the explanation follow.
Automatic Check-in Replies Worth Reading
Basecamp's Automatic Check-ins fire scheduled questions like "What did you work on today?" or "What did you learn last week?" The default answer pattern is a three-line list. The useful answer pattern is two short paragraphs that tell teammates what you actually figured out.
Voice gets you to the useful version without the time cost. Click into the reply box, press your hotkey, speak for 30 to 60 seconds about what you actually did, why it mattered, and what's blocked. A reply like "Spent the morning on the checkout timeout. Turns out the payment provider adds three seconds of latency during peak hours, so I put a Redis cache in front of the product lookup. Total request time is back under two seconds. Tomorrow I'll load-test the cache under concurrent traffic and write up the result on the Message Board" is a 20-second dictation that replaces a 15-minute standup.
To-do Notes With The Context
Basecamp to-dos are small by design: a title, an optional notes field, an assignee, a due date. The notes field is where the to-do becomes useful for whoever picks it up, and it's the field most people skip.
After typing the to-do title, click into the notes area, press your hotkey, and dictate the missing context: which file or post to look at first, what constraint the previous owner hit, where the rough edges are. A 30-second voice note in the notes field saves the assignee three follow-up Pings.
Pings and Campfire Without The Typing Stop
Pings are Basecamp's 1:1 or small-group direct messages. Campfire is the project-level chat room. Both share the same Trix editor as the Message Board, which means the same hotkey workflow drops text into them.
For Pings, voice is most useful on the longer message you keep putting off, the one you'd rather just hop on a call for. Dictate it instead. You get the async record Basecamp wants, the recipient gets to read it on their schedule.
For Campfire, voice helps with the moments where you're explaining something technical and would otherwise type three paragraphs. Quick chatter is still faster by keyboard.
A Note On The Editor
Basecamp's editor is Trix, the WYSIWYG editor 37signals built and open-sourced. It stores HTML, not Markdown. That matters when text lands in it:
- Markdown syntax (
**bold**,# heading,- list) will not render. It stays literal. - Paragraph breaks from dictation survive. Apply bold, headings, lists, and quotes from Basecamp's toolbar after AICHE inserts.
- Attachments still go in through the paperclip or drag-and-drop. AICHE handles the text portion.
- Same editor lives in Message Board posts, comments, to-do notes, Pings, Campfire lines, Docs, and Check-in answers, so one hotkey workflow covers every text field in the app.
What You Get
- Unlimited voice notes with optional cleanup - filler removed, paragraph breaks added where you paused
- Smart Insert - text lands at the cursor in whichever Basecamp field is focused
- Custom vocabulary - drop in your project names, client names, internal jargon so they spell correctly
- Multilingual input with auto-translation - think in your native language, post in English
- Zero-retention audio - audio purged immediately after processing, within 1 second of processing
- Offline queueing - dictate now if you lose Wi-Fi, AICHE processes when you reconnect
Plans start at $3.99/mo (annual) with a 7-day free trial, no credit card. See pricing.
Common Questions
Q: Does this work in the Basecamp desktop app or only the browser?
A: Both. AICHE inserts into the active text field on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Basecamp's native Mac and Windows apps use the same Trix editor as the web version, so the workflow is identical.
Q: Will my dictated Markdown actually format the post?
A: No. Trix stores HTML and ignores Markdown. AICHE inserts clean prose with paragraph breaks. Apply bold, headings, and lists from Basecamp's toolbar after insertion.
Q: Can I dictate a Check-in reply from my phone?
A: AICHE is desktop-only (macOS, Windows, Linux). For mobile Basecamp use, you'd answer Check-ins from the Basecamp iOS or Android app the usual way. The voice workflow lives on your laptop.
Q: My posts include client names and acronyms Basecamp's autocorrect mangles. Fix?
A: Add them to AICHE's Custom Vocabulary. Once they're in, "BCMP," "Goodby Silverstein," or whatever you say lands spelled the way you wrote them.
Q: Does AICHE work in Pings and Campfire too?
A: Yes. Same hotkey, same insertion. The editor is the same Trix instance Basecamp uses everywhere.
Q: I write Heartbeats in German and post in English. Workable?
A: Yes. Turn on Auto-translation in AICHE settings. Speak German, AICHE inserts English. Useful for distributed teams who think in one language and document in another.
Result: Message Board posts that earn their place in Basecamp's async model, Check-in answers your team can actually use, and to-do notes that prevent the next round of follow-up Pings, all written at speaking speed.
Try it now: open Basecamp, click New Message on a project's Message Board, press your hotkey, and dictate a Heartbeat covering what happened this week, what's next, and what you need decisions on.