Cheetah

Cheetah is an AI-powered macOS app designed to assist users during remote software engineering interviews by providing real-time, discreet coaching and live coding platform integration.

Quick demo video (1:28)

With Cheetah, you can improve your interview performance and increase your chances of landing that $300k SWE job, without spending your weekends cramming leetcode challenges and memorizing algorithms you’ll never use.

How it works

Cheetah leverages Whisper for real-time audio transcription and GPT-4 for generating hints and solutions. You need to have your own OpenAI API key to use the app. If you don’t have access to GPT-4, gpt-3.5-turbo may be used as an alternative.

Whisper runs locally on your system, utilizing Georgi Gerganov’s whisper.cpp. A recent M1 or M2 Mac is required for optimal performance.

Getting started

Prerequisites

Requires macOS 13.1 or later.

To build Cheetah, whisper.cpp must be checked out in ../whisper.cpp, and the SDL2 library must be installed:

brew install sdl2

Audio driver setup

For the best results, ensure the audio input captures both sides of the conversation.

When using a video chat app like Zoom or Google Meet, you can achieve this with BlackHole, a free audio loopback driver. Follow the instructions for setting up a Multi-Output Device, and remember not to use the loopback device as input for the video chat app.

App overview

Open the app and select an audio input to start live transcription. A snippet of the transcription will be displayed under the audio input selector.

Note: running the app in debug mode will result in very slow audio transcription performance.

The UI features three buttons:

Answer: Generates an answer for the interviewer’s question.

Refine: Updates the existing answer, useful for when the interviewer provides additional constraints or clarification.

Analyze: Analyzes code and logs from the live coding environment in your web browser. Requires the browser extension.

You can also select (highlight) a portion of a generated answer and click Refine to get more detail.

Installing the browser extension

Currently, only Firefox is supported. Follow these steps to install the extension:

1. Add the domain of the live coding platform to matches in ./extension/manifest.json
2. Go to about:debugging
3. Click “This Firefox”
4. Click “Load Temporary Add-on”
5. Select ./extension/manifest.json

Disclaimer

Cheetah is a satirical art project and is not intended for use in real-world settings. It may generate incorrect or inappropriate solutions. Users should exercise caution and take responsibility for the information provided by the app.