AI Say

Local text-to-speech via ~/.local/bin/ai-say. Kokoro-first with flite and speech-dispatcher fallbacks. Requires the voice stack to be installed first.

Prerequisites

The voice stack must be installed before using this skill:

git clone https://github.com/Ema93sh/ai-voice-stack.git
cd ai-voice-stack
scripts/voice-up-setup.sh --with-system-deps

This installs ai-say to ~/.local/bin/ and sets up Kokoro TTS.

Usage

Speak text:

~/.local/bin/ai-say "Hello world"

Pipe text:

echo "Read this aloud" | ~/.local/bin/ai-say

Temporary voice override:

AI_KOKORO_VOICE=am_michael ~/.local/bin/ai-say "Different voice"

Available Voices

English (American)

Female: af_alloy, af_aoede, af_bella, af_heart (default), af_jessica, af_kore, af_nicole, af_nova, af_river, af_sarah, af_sky

Male: am_adam, am_echo, am_eric, am_fenrir, am_liam, am_michael, am_onyx, am_puck, am_santa

English (British)

Female: bf_alice, bf_emma, bf_isabella, bf_lily

Male: bm_daniel, bm_fable, bm_george, bm_lewis

Other Languages

Spanish (ef_dora, em_alex), French (ff_siwis), Hindi (hf_alpha, hf_beta, hm_omega, hm_psi), Italian (if_sara, im_nicola), Japanese (jf_alpha, jf_gongitsune, jf_nezumi, jf_tebukuro, jm_kumo), Portuguese (pf_dora, pm_alex), Chinese (zf_xiaobei, zf_xiaoni, zf_xiaoxiao, zf_xiaoyi, zm_yunjian, zm_yunxi, zm_yunxia, zm_yunyang)

Persistent Voice Change

Edit ~/.config/ai-audio.env:

export AI_KOKORO_VOICE="${AI_KOKORO_VOICE:-af_bella}"

Volume / Gain

If speech is too quiet:

export AI_KOKORO_GAIN_DB=18
~/.local/bin/ai-say "Volume test"

Diagnostics

Check stack health:

~/.local/bin/voice-status

Check audio devices:

pactl list short sinks
pactl list short sources
cat ~/.config/ai-audio.env

Test direct tone on a specific sink:

ffmpeg -hide_banner -loglevel error -f lavfi -i 'sine=frequency=880:duration=3' -f wav - | paplay --device='<sink-name>'

Notes

• ai-say is Kokoro-first, with flite and spd-say fallback paths.
• Text is truncated at 1600 chars and chunked at 320 chars for reliable playback.
• Keep messages respectful and follow user intent exactly for spoken content.