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
sayfirst (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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
sayis unavailable or errors, still send the text response and note that TTS failed.