joshmedeski TTS Clone - speak in a cloned voice
Speak text aloud with the local tts-clone binary, which clones a voice from a
reference recording instead of using Kokoro's stock voice table.
Speaking
tts-clone "Your spoken message here"
Pass no --voice flag. The voice is per-user machine configuration, not
something this skill decides — tts-clone resolves it from $PST_CLONE_VOICE,
then the machine's configured default, then the only installed voice. Hardcoding
a name here would break every user but one, since pst is open source.
Only pass --voice <name> when the user explicitly names a voice.
ALWAYS run tts-clone via the Bash tool with run_in_background: true and no
trailing &. A trailing & is redundant, trips a command-safety prompt, and
fires the completion notification before the audio finishes playing.
Timing - this is not tts
Unlike tts, Chatterbox cannot stream. It generates a complete file before
any sound plays, so expect roughly:
- ~5s of silence before playback begins (longer on the first run of a session, which loads model weights from disk)
- then playback of the generated audio
Because of that delay, prefer tts for running narration and always-on voice
modes. Reach for tts-clone when the voice itself is the point.
When no voice is installed
tts-clone exits with no voices installed when the user has not set one up. Do
not try to work around it or fall back to tts silently. Tell the user they need
a reference recording installed at
${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/pst/voices/<name>.wav with its transcript
alongside as <name>.txt, then tts-clone --set-default <name>.
Run tts-clone --voices to see what is installed.
Guidelines
- Keep spoken text conversational and natural — it will be spoken aloud.
- Avoid technical syntax, file paths, code snippets, or markdown in spoken text.
This matters more here than with
tts: paths come out badly mangled (~/.config/pstwas heard as "IRconfigPress"). Say paths as words, or omit them. - Say "id" as "eye-dee" (e.g. "click up id" → "click up eye-dee").
- Say "Nutiliti" as "newtility" (a play on "new utility", new-TIL-ih-tee).
- Escape any quotes or special shell characters before passing to the command.
- If the user provides literal text, speak that directly instead of summarizing.
- A voice sample is personal. Never copy a
voices/file into the repo, quote its path into committed code, or share it — the whole point of keeping voices under XDG config is that installing pst never means handing over your voice.