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+# WhispAssist v0.5.1
+
+**Privacy-first, Windows-native meeting assistant — everything on-device, nothing leaves unless you say so.**
+
+v0.5.0 put the **i18n groundwork** in place. v0.5.1 fills it in: WhispAssist now ships in
+**20 languages**, so you can run the whole app — the shell, meetings list, transcript/notes, summary
+panel, and every corner of Settings — in your own language. Everything stays off-by-default and
+local-first; this is a UI-language release with no change to what leaves your device (nothing, by default).
+
+One universal installer (**MSI** and **NSIS**) covers every machine: **Vulkan** for all GPUs
+(NVIDIA/AMD/Intel), the Intel **NPU** (OpenVINO), a **DirectML** fallback, and **CPU**.
+
+---
+
+## ✨ Highlights
+
+### 20 interface languages
+Pick your language under **Settings ▸ Language**. Alongside English, this release adds full
+translations for:
+
+- **Arabic** (العربية) · **Bengali** (বাংলা) · **German** (Deutsch)
+- **Spanish** — Spain (Español, España) and **Mexico** (Español, México)
+- **Finnish** (Suomi) · **French** — France (Français, France) and **Canada** (Français, Canada)
+- **Hindi** (हिन्दी) · **Korean** (한국어) · **Norwegian Bokmål** (Norsk bokmål)
+- **Portuguese** — Brazil (Português, Brasil) and **Portugal** (Português, Portugal)
+- **Russian** (Русский) · **Sinhala** (සිංහල) · **Swedish** (Svenska)
+- **Tamil** (தமிழ்) · **Urdu** (اردو) · **Mandarin Chinese, Simplified** (中文简体)
+
+Your choice persists across launches, and any untranslated string quietly falls back to English rather
+than showing a raw key — so partial translations degrade gracefully.
+
+### Right-to-left layout
+Selecting **Arabic** or **Urdu** flips the whole interface to **right-to-left**, so those languages
+read and lay out correctly rather than being crammed into an LTR shell.
+
+Adding a further language remains a one-file job — drop in a single JSON translation, no code changes.
+
+---
+
+## 📦 Install
+
+**Requirements:** Windows 10 or 11 (x64). WhispAssist needs **WebView2** (preinstalled on Windows 11;
+the installer fetches it on Windows 10). Importing from a file/URL additionally needs **`ffmpeg`**
+(and **`yt-dlp`** for URLs) on your PATH — install those separately.
+
+1. Download **`WhispAssist_0.5.1_x64_en-US.msi`** (or the NSIS **`WhispAssist_0.5.1_x64-setup.exe`**).
+2. Run it and accept the UAC prompt. If SmartScreen appears, choose **More info → Run anyway**.
+3. Launch **WhispAssist** from the Start menu.
+
+On first run WA picks the best transcription backend (**NPU → NVIDIA → AMD → Intel → CPU**). It runs
+without admin rights, never adds itself to startup, and keeps all data under
+`%LOCALAPPDATA%\WhispAssist`.
+
+## 🔐 Checksums (SHA-256)
+
+```
+911618e6996a079bad1cbe46731c89ee247f3f5f17c09b60091d7e6a5e7cbef0  WhispAssist_0.5.1_x64_en-US.msi
+ffabbd74def981da176931349b2813a3927d7376c0d18e9d191891abfc17c385  WhispAssist_0.5.1_x64-setup.exe
+```
+
+Verify after download:
+
+```powershell
+Get-FileHash .\WhispAssist_0.5.1_x64_en-US.msi -Algorithm SHA256
+```
+
+---
+
+## Privacy, unchanged
+Everything optional is **off by default**. With nothing configured, WhispAssist makes **no content
+egress at all**. Recording is opt-in; sync/AI credentials live only in the OS credential store; the
+MCP server is loopback-only and adds no egress. The reachable-host allowlist is derived from your
+settings and enforced in the core.