Voice Wake Say

Voice Wake Say

Overview

Use macOS say to read the assistant's response out loud whenever the conversation came from Voice Wake/voice recognition. Do not use the tts tool (it calls cloud providers).

When to Use say (CHECK EVERY MESSAGE INDIVIDUALLY)

IF the user message STARTS WITH: User talked via voice recognition

• Step 1: Acknowledge with say first (so the user knows you heard them)
• Step 2: Then perform the task
• Step 3: Optionally speak again when done if it makes sense

IF the user message does NOT start with that exact phrase

• THEN: Do NOT use say. Text-only response only.

Critical:

• Check EACH message individually — context does NOT carry over
• The trigger phrase must be at the VERY START of the message
• For tasks that take time, acknowledge FIRST so the user knows you're working

Workflow

1. Detect Voice Wake context

• Trigger ONLY when the latest user/system message STARTS WITH User talked via voice recognition
• If the message instructs "repeat prompt first", keep that behavior in the response.

2. Prepare spoken text

• Use the final response text as the basis.
• Strip markdown/code blocks; if the response is long or code-heavy, speak a short summary and mention that details are on screen.

3. Speak with say (local macOS TTS)

printf '%s' "$SPOKEN_TEXT" | say

Optional controls (use only if set):

printf '%s' "$SPOKEN_TEXT" | say -v "$SAY_VOICE"
printf '%s' "$SPOKEN_TEXT" | say -r "$SAY_RATE"

Failure handling

• If say is unavailable or errors, still send the text response and note that TTS failed.