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riff-voice

README.md

Riff Voice - Voice Narrator for AI Agents

Riff Voice gives your AI agents a voice. It runs a local daemon that listens on a Unix socket for text-to-speech requests and speaks them aloud using Kokoro TTS via MLX on Apple Silicon. Claude Code hooks trigger narration automatically when your agent starts tasks, finishes work, or hits errors - so you can walk away from your desk and still know what's happening.

How It Works

  • riff-daemon runs as a macOS LaunchAgent, listening on a Unix socket at /tmp/riff.sock
  • riff-say sends text to the daemon for immediate speech synthesis and playback
  • riff-ctl controls the daemon (pause, resume, change voice, adjust volume)
  • Claude Code hooks call riff-say on agent lifecycle events (notification, task start/end, errors)

Kokoro TTS runs entirely on-device using MLX (Apple Neural Engine) - no API keys, no network, no latency.

Quick Start

cd riff-voice
make install

This installs dependencies, sets up the LaunchAgent, creates CLI symlinks, and copies the Claude Code hook.

CLI Usage

# Speak some text
riff-say "Build complete, all tests passing"

# Speak with a specific voice
riff-say --voice af_heart "Starting the deployment now"

# Control the daemon
riff-ctl status          # Check daemon state
riff-ctl pause           # Mute narration
riff-ctl resume          # Unmute narration
riff-ctl voice af_sky    # Switch voice
riff-ctl volume 0.7      # Set volume (0.0-1.0)

Configuration

Config lives at ~/.config/riff/config.json (created on first make install from config.default.json).

Key settings:

  • voice - default Kokoro voice ID (e.g. af_heart)
  • volume - playback volume, 0.0 to 1.0
  • speed - speech rate multiplier
  • socket_path - Unix socket path (default /tmp/riff.sock)

Voice Presets

Riff ships with access to all 54 Kokoro voices. Voice IDs follow the pattern {language}_{name} - e.g. af_heart, am_fenrir, bf_emma. Run riff-ctl voices to list available voices.

Files

File What it does
src/riff/ Python package (daemon, CLI, TTS engine)
hooks/riff-hook.sh Claude Code hook for agent lifecycle narration
config.default.json Default configuration template
co.remotehumans.riff-voice.plist LaunchAgent config (auto-start on login)
Makefile Install, uninstall, and management commands
pyproject.toml UV project config and dependencies