@wierdbytes/pi-voice

Spoken summary after each agent turn for the pi coding agent.

After the assistant finishes a user request, this extension:

1. Picks the assistant text from the latest turn.
2. Generates a short, expressive 1–2 sentence summary of it.
3. Speaks the summary aloud through your system's audio player.

If a new agent turn starts while a previous summary is still playing, the in-flight summary is cancelled and replaced. Stays silent in print/RPC mode and when no Gemini API key is configured.

Install

pi install npm:@wierdbytes/pi-voice

Restart pi to activate. Verify with /voice status.

You also need:

• A Gemini API key (see Auth below).
• A system audio player on $PATH:
  • macOS: afplay (preinstalled).
  • Linux: one of paplay (PulseAudio), aplay (ALSA), or ffplay (ffmpeg).
  • Windows: PowerShell (preinstalled).

Auth

Resolved in this order, first hit wins:

1. PI_VOICE_GEMINI_API_KEY — package-specific override env var. Always wins, useful for power users who want voice to use a different Google credential than the rest of pi.
2. pi's stored Google credential — read via ctx.modelRegistry.getApiKeyForProvider("google"). This covers:
   • any key set with pi auth set google <key> (stored in pi's auth.json),
   • custom-provider Google entries in models.json,
   • the GEMINI_API_KEY environment variable that pi-ai falls back on. The cached value is refreshed on session_start, on every agent_end, and on every /voice subcommand, so a credential rotated mid-session is picked up without restarting pi.
3. GOOGLE_API_KEY — last-resort env fallback. pi-ai's registry only maps GEMINI_API_KEY to the google provider, so we keep GOOGLE_API_KEY as a separate hop for users who only have that one exported.

If none of the above resolves to a non-empty key, the extension stays silent on every agent_end and /voice status shows key: none. The status row labels each successful resolution with its source (PI_VOICE_GEMINI_API_KEY / pi:google / GEMINI_API_KEY / GOOGLE_API_KEY).

Configuration

State lives in ~/.pi/agent/wierd-voice/:

Migrating from a previous version? On first run after upgrading, the extension silently renames the legacy ~/.pi/agent/pi-wierd-voice/ directory to ~/.pi/agent/wierd-voice/ so you keep your config and last-played audio.

• config.json — settings (created on first save).
• last.wav — most recent synthesized audio. Overwritten each turn and by /voice say. Used by /voice replay.

config.json shape:

{
  "muted": false,
  "voice": "Umbriel",
  "scope": "last",
  "summarizerModel": "anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5",
  "summarizerThinkingLevel": "medium"
}

• muted — when true, no playback (still kept current via /voice unmute).
• voice — one of 30 prebuilt voices (see the overlay's Voice row).
• scope — last (final assistant message only) or sinceUser (assistant text + tool-call digests since the last user message).
• summarizerModel — provider/model id for the summary sub-agent. Unset ⇒ uses the current session model.
• summarizerThinkingLevel — reasoning effort for the summary sub-agent, forwarded as pi --thinking <level>. One of off | minimal | low | medium | high | xhigh. Unset ⇒ inherit pi's default for the chosen model. The overlay clamps the value to whatever the highlighted model advertises in its thinkingLevelMap (same contract as /web fetch-model).

The TTS model itself is hardcoded to gemini-3.1-flash-tts-preview.

Commands

Every persisted setting (voice, scope, summarizer model, mute) is configured through a single centered overlay. Bare /voice opens it; the rest of the surface is imperative actions.

Command	What it does
/voice	Open the settings overlay (Up/Down between rows, Enter/Space cycles or opens submenu, Esc closes). Falls back to status in non-interactive sessions.
/voice status	Show config path, key source, voice, scope, summarizer, thinking level, muted, audio player.
/voice mute	Shortcut for the overlay's Muted row. Sets muted=true and aborts any in-flight job.
/voice unmute	Shortcut for the overlay's Muted row. Sets muted=false.
/voice say <text>	Synthesize and play <text> directly. Bypasses the summarizer.
/voice replay	Re-spawn the audio player on the stored last.wav.
/voice reset	Restore defaults (muted=false, voice=Umbriel, scope=last, summarizer cleared).

The overlay rows:

• Muted — cycle false / true. Same effect as /voice mute.
• Voice — Enter opens a picker showing all 30 prebuilt Gemini voices with their descriptors (Umbriel Easy-going, Kore Firm, Puck Upbeat, …). Up/Down to scroll, Enter saves, Esc cancels. The parent row label shows both, e.g. Umbriel · Easy-going.
• Summary scope — cycle last / sinceUser.
• Summarizer model — Enter opens a dual model + effort picker (a port of /web fetch-model):
  • Up/Down moves through every model with configured auth (mirrors /models), plus a (session model) entry at the top that clears the override.
  • Left/Right cycles the reasoning effort, restricted to the levels the highlighted model advertises in thinkingLevelMap. Switching models re-clamps the effort (e.g. dropping xhigh when moving to a model that doesn't support it).
  • Enter saves both fields atomically; Esc abandons the choice.
  • The row label in the parent overlay shows both, e.g. anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5 · medium.

Every change is persisted to config.json immediately (Esc just closes the overlay; there is no separate "save" step — same UX as /settings).

CLI flags

• --no-voice — disable voice playback for the current session.