speakturbo-tts

$npx skills add emzod/speak-turbo --skill speakturbo-tts
SKILL.md

Speakturbo Tts

Give your agent the ability to speak to you real-time. Ultra-fast text-to-speech with ~90ms latency and 8 built-in voices. ``` speakturbo "Hello world"

speakturbo - Talk to your Claude!

Give your agent the ability to speak to you real-time. Ultra-fast text-to-speech with ~90ms latency and 8 built-in voices.

Quick Start

# Play immediately - you should hear "Hello world" through your speakers
speakturbo "Hello world"
# Output: ⚡ 92ms → ▶ 93ms → ✓ 1245ms

# Verify it's working by saving to file
speakturbo "Hello world" -o test.wav
ls -lh test.wav  # Should show ~50-100KB file
Output explained: ⚡ = first audio received, ▶ = playback started, ✓ = done

First Run

The first execution takes 2-5 seconds while the daemon starts and loads the model into memory. Subsequent calls are ~90ms to first sound.
# First run (slow - daemon starting)
speakturbo "Starting up"  # ~2-5 seconds

# Second run (fast - daemon already running)
speakturbo "Now I'm fast"  # ~90ms
`## Usage`
# Basic - plays immediately (default voice: alba)
speakturbo "Hello world"

# Save to file (no audio playback)
speakturbo "Hello" -o output.wav

# Save to specific file
speakturbo "Goodbye" -o goodbye.wav

# Quiet mode (suppress status messages, still plays audio)
speakturbo "Hello" -q

# List available voices
speakturbo --list-voices

Available Voices

Voice
Type
alba
Female (default)
marius
Male
javert
Male
jean
Male
fantine
Female
cosette
Female
eponine
Female
azelma
Female

Performance

Metric
Value
Time to first sound
~90ms (daemon warm)
First run
2-5s (daemon startup)
Real-time factor
~4x faster
Sample rate
24kHz mono

Architecture

speakturbo (Rust CLI, 2.2MB)
    │
    │ HTTP streaming (port 7125)
    ▼
speakturbo-daemon (Python + pocket-tts)
    │
    │ Model in memory, auto-shutdown after 1hr idle
    ▼
Audio playback (rodio)

Text Input

  • Encoding: UTF-8
  • Quotes in text: Use escaping: speakturbo "She said \"hello\""
  • Long text: Supported, streams as it generates

Exit Codes

Code
Meaning
0
Success (audio played/saved)
1
Error (daemon connection failed, invalid args)

When to Use

Use speakturbo when:
  • You need instant audio feedback (~90ms)
  • Speed matters more than voice variety
  • Built-in voices are sufficient
Use speak instead when:
  • You need custom voice cloning (Morgan Freeman, etc.) → speak "text" --voice ~/.chatter/voices/morgan_freeman.wav
  • You need emotion tags like [laugh], [sigh]
  • Quality/variety matters more than speed
See the speak skill documentation for full usage.

Troubleshooting

No audio plays:
# Check daemon is running
curl http://127.0.0.1:7125/health
# Expected: {"status":"ready","voices":["alba","marius",...]}

# Verify by saving to file and playing manually
speakturbo "test" -o /tmp/test.wav
afplay /tmp/test.wav  # macOS
aplay /tmp/test.wav   # Linux
`**Daemon won't start:**`
# Check port availability
lsof -i :7125

# Manually kill and restart
pkill -f "daemon_streaming"
speakturbo "test"  # Auto-restarts daemon
First run is slow: This is expected. The daemon needs to load the ~100MB model into memory. Subsequent calls will be fast (~90ms).

Daemon Management

The daemon auto-starts on first use and auto-shuts down after 1 hour idle.
# Check status
curl http://127.0.0.1:7125/health

# Manual stop
pkill -f "daemon_streaming"

# View logs
cat /tmp/speakturbo.log

Comparison with speak

Feature
speakturbo
speak
Time to first sound
~90ms
~4-8s
Voice cloning
❌
✅
Emotion tags
❌
✅
Voices
8 built-in
Custom wav files
Engine
pocket-tts
Chatterbox