dsh-speak 🔊 — Voice announcements for AI coding harnesses

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Let your agent tell you when a long task is done — no more staring at the screen.

dsh-speak reads the final assistant reply aloud through system speech synthesis — on Windows using natural voices (Windows 11 built-in, or NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter on Windows 10) with graceful fallback to stock voices; on macOS using the built-in say (can follow a Siri natural voice). It was built for DeepSeek Harness and is structured so any harness can plug in.

Features

• Automatic: DSH web plugin watches the session event stream and announces the final reply (skips reasoning/tool-call narration, merges multi-step messages).
• Gets your attention: announces approval requests (hears "需要你的审批" when the agent is waiting on you) and questions the agent asks via ask_user_question.
• Final-reply replay (1.7.0): every final reply (turn tail) has a 🔊 button in its action bar — click to replay that message, click again to stop, click another to switch. Speech execution stays fully owned by the DSH host (keeps speaking even with the browser closed).
• Host speech queue (1.7.0): only one native speech process runs at a time; queued items continue automatically. A WebSocket syncs the live state (which message is speaking, queue length) to the UI.
• Optional event announcements (1.6.0): turn end, command done, goal changes, tool errors, and todo updates can each be announced, toggled independently (off by default).
• Visual configuration (1.7.0): a dedicated Settings → dsh-speak settings page — every option (master switch, automatic speech, Markdown cleaning, code blocks, event toggles, fixed prompt, …) is editable from the Web UI, no hand-edited YAML.
• Master switch (1.6.0): silence everything with one toggle.
• Bundle auto-registration (1.3.0): declare the package in dsh.profile.bundles and the plugin registers itself via the bundled cordis.patch.yml — no manual patch entry needed.
• Best-effort: never throws, never blocks the harness, never breaks a session.
• Natural voices: Windows prefers natural voices — Windows 11 built-in packs, or voices registered via NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter on Windows 10 (e.g. Xiaoxiao); macOS uses the system reading voice (Siri natural voices on recent macOS). Both fall back to any installed voice.
• Robust text cleaning: strips markdown/URLs/emoji that make speech synthesis fail silently, and guards the adapter's per-utterance character ceiling.
• Portable engine: any process can speak with one line: Windows powershell -File speak.ps1 -Text "你好" / macOS ./speak.sh -t "你好".

How it works

harness event (DSH session event / Claude Code Stop hook / anything)
      │
      ▼  adapters/…  (harness-specific trigger: filter, throttle, cancel)
      ▼  engine/speak.ps1 / speak.sh  (harness-agnostic: clean text → SAPI5 / say)
      ▼  🔊 you hear the final reply

The adapter turns harness-specific events into engine calls; the engine cleans the text and speaks it, fully decoupled from any harness. Full design: docs/DESIGN.md.

Prerequisites

Windows:

• Windows 10 or 11, PowerShell (any recent version).
• Natural voices:
  • Windows 11 (21H2–23H2): natural voice packs are built into the system — no extra installation. Enable/switch them in Settings → Accessibility → Narrator or Settings → Time & Language → Speech.
  • Windows 11 24H2/25H2: natural voices moved to MSIX app packages, which System.Speech may not enumerate (falls back to a robotic stock voice). As on Windows 10, install NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter to bridge them.
  • Windows 10: install NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter and use its VoiceDownloader to download the natural voice pack(s) you want (Chinese or any other language).
• Without natural voices, the engine falls back to a stock voice (e.g. Huihui).

macOS:

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel), built-in say command — no extra software.
• Chinese voices: see the macOS section (incl. the Siri natural-voice picker and its pitfalls).

DSH web app:

• Tested against DSH 0.1.7-rc.2. Host/client APIs changed twice since 0.1.1, both handled here:
  • 0.1.7 replaced the settings provider API with Config projection: the settings service now reads each active Loader entry's own exported Config schema and projects its volatile fields into the settings UI (ctx.settings.describe() on the host, ctx.configForms in the browser). settings.register(namespace, schema, { base }) — the 1.6.0–1.8.x wiring — is gone, and the browser service settingsScope was replaced by configForms. This plugin therefore exports its schema as Config and the settings namespace is its entry id (dsh-speak; a leftover speech-hook row from 1.8.x is still bound, see below).
  • 0.1.2 stopped putting Conversation target data into the Session snapshot (the 🔊 button resolves the clicked message through the Chat target hook useChat), and deleted @deepseek-ai/dsh-settings's installSettingsSection / settingsNamespace helpers.
• The host floor lives where dsh-market reads it: engines.dsh in package.json (>=0.1.7-rc.2). The catalog card and its "compatible with current DSH" filter read exactly that field, so the floor moves only after a release has been verified against the new host.
• 1.8.2 requires the settings model introduced in 0.1.7: on an older host the browser half would wait forever for the configForms service. Use 1.8.1 for DSH ≤ 0.1.6.

Install & quick start

DSH — Option A: npm plugin (recommended)

# 1. install the plugin into your web profile (adds dsh-speak to
#    ~/.dsh/profiles/web/package.json dependencies AND to dsh.profile.bundles)
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-speak

# 2. that is all — the package ships its own bundle patch, which registers the
#    `dsh-speak` entry. Do NOT also hand-write an `insert:` row for it:
#    registering the same entry twice makes the id non-unique, and DSH's config
#    editor then rejects every settings write with
#    `settings/rejected: Configuration for "dsh-speak" is overridden by a home
#    patch or command-line overlay` (speech keeps working, the settings page
#    silently bounces).
#
#    To pin options in YAML anyway, add ONLY this top-level row (the settings page
#    edits it in place; `config` on a top-level row is the shape the editor
#    supports — see "DSH plugin config"):
#    - id: dsh-speak
#      name: 'dsh-speak'
#      config: {}
#
#    The entry id IS the settings namespace on DSH >= 0.1.7: your options are
#    stored under that key in this same file. A row left over from 1.8.x
#    (id: speech-hook) keeps working — the browser half binds either id.

# 3. restart the DSH web app — replies are now announced automatically

Installing from the in-app marketplace is the same path: it adds the package to dsh.profile.bundles. Only the manual installs below need hand-written rows. One registration path per profile — never both.

No pnpm? dsh plugin forwards to pnpm, which is not installed on every machine. The exact same install can be done with npm directly:

npm install --prefix "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\profiles\web" dsh-speak

On macOS (bash):

npm install --prefix "$HOME/.dsh/profiles/web" dsh-speak

An npm install alone does not register the plugin: add either the bundle name to ~/.dsh/profiles/web/package.json → dsh.profile.bundles, or the two rows from the file-install section — not both.

The engine ships inside the package (node_modules/dsh-speak/engine/), so no extra copying is needed.

Let your agent do it? Paste this repo URL (https://github.com/Alan2Z/dsh-speak) into your DSH session and ask it to install the plugin — your agent follows this very README. Approving the out-of-workspace writes (~/.dsh) is all that's needed.

DSH — Option B: file install (no npm needed)

# 1. clone
git clone https://github.com/Alan2Z/dsh-speak.git
cd dsh-speak

# 2. one-command install: copies engine + plugin, registers in cordis.patch.yml
powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File adapters\dsh\install.ps1

# 3. verify the engine speaks
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\hooks\speak.ps1" -Text "你好，语音播报已就绪。"

# 4. restart the DSH web app — replies are now announced automatically

What the file installer did:

macOS

The same adapter runs natively on macOS — the plugin auto-detects the platform and calls engine/speak.sh (the built-in say command) instead of speak.ps1. Since 1.2.0 the macOS engine ships in the npm package — no extra software.

# 1. install into your web profile (no pnpm needed — only `dsh plugin` requires it)
npm install --prefix "$HOME/.dsh/profiles/web" dsh-speak

# 2. register in ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml (bare package name — no file:/// URL):
#    - insert:
#        - id: dsh-speak
#          name: 'dsh-speak'
#    - id: dsh-speak
#      name: 'dsh-speak'
#      config: {}

# 3. no restart needed — the patch watcher hot-reloads; replies are announced
#    after the throttle (~1.5 s); tool-calling replies are announced at turn end

With pnpm installed, dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-speak works identically.

Voices (important — two pitfalls)

• By default the engine follows the system reading voice (Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → System Voice). On macOS 26 that picker has an ⓘ circle icon next to it — click it for the full voice list; the plain dropdown does not contain the Siri natural voices. Pick e.g. "普通话 Siri 声音1（男声）" there.
• Siri voice (Settings → Siri → Voice) and the system reading voice are two independent settings; Siri voices are not exposed to say -v '?' and cannot be selected by name — they only work as the system default.
• ⚠️ Pitfall 1 (reproduced): opening the "Spoken Content / Siri Voice" settings pane — even without changing anything — drifts/resets the system voice to the classic "婷婷 (Tingting)". If the voice suddenly changes, re-pick it via the ⓘ entry.
• ⚠️ Pitfall 2: the log lives at $TMPDIR/dsh-speech-hook.log (os.tmpdir() — not /tmp).
• Use -v Eddy|Flo|Tingting to force a specific voice (say -v '?' lists them).
• say has no volume flag — volume follows the system output volume.

Test the engine alone (no DSH needed)

curl -sfL -o ~/speak.sh "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/Alan2Z/dsh-speak@main/engine/speak.sh"
chmod +x ~/speak.sh
~/speak.sh -t "你好，Mac 版语音播报测试"
~/speak.sh -t "测试" -v Eddy -r 200              # explicit voice + rate

Claude Code

Register the Stop hook in ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "hooks": {
    "Stop": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File C:\\path\\to\\dsh-speak\\adapters\\claude-code\\stop-hook.ps1"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Any other harness

Call the engine directly from your agent / wrapper / script:

# announce a one-liner
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File engine\speak.ps1 -Text "构建完成"

# announce a long summary (blocking, returns when done)
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File engine\speech-summary.ps1 -Text "…"

# ask for user attention (blocking, for prompts/approvals)
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File engine\speech-prompt.ps1 -Text "请做出选择"

Configuration

Engine parameters

See docs/DESIGN.md §5 configuration reference:

speak.ps1 -Text "…" -Volume 50 -Rate 1 -MaxChars 300 -LongTextMessage "本次播报内容较长，请自行阅读。"

DSH plugin config

Either way works, and they stay in sync (both write the same profile patch document — the settings service persists UI edits into the row it read them from):

1. Web UI (1.7.0, recommended): a dedicated Settings → dsh-speak settings page. Every option is editable and saved there (visible in dsh --dump-config, per-profile, survives npm updates).
2. Profile patch config block (equivalent):

# ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml
# TWO rows, and the shape matters: `insert` provides the entry, the TOP-LEVEL row
# carries the config the settings page edits. DSH's config editor rewrites a
# config in place only on a top-level row; a config nested inside the insert row
# (what 1.8.x profiles and the 1.8.2 notes first showed) makes the UI accept an
# edit, apply it live, and then silently roll it back on disk — the value reverts
# on the next boot.
- insert:
    - id: dsh-speak           # the entry id IS the settings namespace (0.1.7+)
      name: 'dsh-speak'
- id: dsh-speak
  name: 'dsh-speak'
  config:
    enabled: true           # master switch: false silences everything
    automaticSpeech: true   # auto-speak final replies
    queueAllMessages: false # true = enqueue every assistant message as it arrives
    replayFullRead: false   # true = manual replay skips the long-text truncation, reads everything
    cleanMarkdownFormatting: true # convert Markdown to natural speech
    readInlineCode: true    # read inline code without backticks
    codeBlocks: smart       # all | smart | replace (fenced code blocks)
    codeBlockMaxChars: 300  # smart-mode code block character limit
    codeBlockReplacementText: 'You can see the code in our history.' # replace-mode text
    throttleMs: 1500        # merge delay before announcing (ms)
    engine: ''              # engine path override; '' = auto-resolve
    announceApprovals: true # speak approval requests
    announceQuestions: true # speak ask_user_question content
    stripApprovalPrefix: true  # strip "escalate sandbox to ...: " prefix
    questionGapMs: 2000      # pause between multiple question announcements (ms)
    longTextMode: message   # message | heading (speak largest md heading)
    longTextMessage: '本次播报内容较长，请自行阅读。' # fixed prompt for message mode
    maxChars: 300           # per-utterance ceiling (macOS default 0 = unlimited)
    volume: 50              # Windows only
    rate: 0                 # 0 = engine default (Windows SAPI scale / macOS wpm)
    # —— optional event announcements (1.6.0, all off by default) ——
    announceTurnEnd: false     # turn/end — "第 N 轮对话完成"
    announceCommandDone: false # command/done — command finished/failed
    announceGoalChange: false  # goal/change — goal created/updated/completed
    announceToolErrors: false  # tool/result error — announce (english dropped)
    announceTodoWrite: false   # todo/write — todo list updated

Resolution order: schema default → patch config → UI user settings. Fields written in YAML show up in the UI too. Platform note: maxChars defaults to 0 on macOS (say has no ceiling) and 300 on Windows (SAPI safe limit).

Values outside the ranges in the table (volume 0-100, Windows rate -10..10) are clamped before they reach the engine — SAPI throws on an out-of-range Volume/Rate, which surfaces as silence and nothing else. A clamped value is logged as settings 值超出范围，已钳制: <field> <given> -> <used>. An explicit 0 is always honored (volume: 0 silences, maxChars: 0 means unlimited, throttleMs: 0 announces without merging).

Keep the config on the top-level row. It is not a style preference: with the config: block nested inside the insert row, the settings page still renders and the running plugin still obeys an edit, but DSH's config editor cannot rewrite that row — it appends a new top-level row and then rolls the write back, so the value silently reverts the next time dsh starts. Check with python scripts/settings-ui-check.py, which asserts the write lands in the patch.

Upgrading from 1.8.x: edit the options through the settings page, or move your old config: block onto the new top-level row (see the shape above). Before 0.1.7 the options lived in a dsh-speak: section of ~/.dsh/settings.yaml; that file was migrated to settings.yaml.imported by DSH, and a section whose name matched no Loader entry (1.8.x registered the namespace in code, so dsh-speak: matched nothing) was left behind. If you had custom values, copy them into that config: block — the entry id (dsh-speak) is now the key DSH looks for.

Option reference

Long-text modes

When cleaned text exceeds maxChars:

• message (default): speak longTextMessage (本次播报内容较长，请自行阅读。, editable in the UI or YAML).
• heading: pick the largest markdown heading in the raw text — fewest # wins, tie → first. When there is no heading at all, speak a coherent opening instead of just the first line: the leading maxChars window, trimmed back to its last sentence end, and kept whole when that would drop more than half the window. Sentence ends are recognised bilingually: full-width 。！？； and … always count, while half-width .!?; only count when followed by whitespace, a closing quote/bracket, or (for the very last character) one read past the window — so an English period + space at the edge still lands, but a decimal point such as Version 0.1. does not. (Before 1.8.0 this fallback spoke the first non-empty line only, which sounded like the narration stopped after line 1.) The chosen candidate is still cleaned and subject to the maxChars ceiling, falling back to the message if it is itself too long.

Full architecture and design rationale: docs/DESIGN.md.

Customizing (survives npm updates)

You can tune behavior without forking, and your changes survive npm update:

1. Copy the engine out and edit it (recommended — this is where defaults live: volume, rate, MaxChars, LongTextMessage, voice logic):

   # Windows
   Copy-Item "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\profiles\web\node_modules\dsh-speak\engine\speak.ps1" "$env:USERPROFILE\.dsh\hooks\my-speak.ps1"
   # macOS
   cp ~/.dsh/profiles/web/node_modules/dsh-speak/engine/speak.sh ~/.dsh/hooks/my-speak.sh

   Then point the plugin at your copy in the config block:

   Windows: keep the file's UTF-8 BOM. speak.ps1 is a UTF-8 script and Windows PowerShell 5.1 only knows that from the 3-byte BOM (EF BB BF) at the start; an editor that saves it without one makes the system ANSI code page decode it instead, and Chinese text inside the script turns to mojibake — the symptom is silence or wrong trimming, with no error. The shipped script keeps all of its logic ASCII-only for that reason, so a lost BOM only garbles the Chinese comments and the default prompt. After editing, check with Get-Content -Encoding Byte -TotalCount 3 your-speak.ps1 (expect 239 187 191), or run node scripts/test-engine-static.js.

   # edit the top-level row (NOT the insert row — see "DSH plugin config")
   - id: dsh-speak
     name: 'dsh-speak'
     config:
       engine: 'C:/Users/<you>/.dsh/hooks/my-speak.ps1'   # or ~/.dsh/hooks/my-speak.sh on macOS

   The plugin resolves the engine as config.engine → package engine → ~/.dsh/hooks/, so your copy wins. npm update only touches the package — your engine stays.

2. Edit the file inside node_modules — works, but the next npm update overwrites it.

3. Fork the repo — full control, publish your own package if you want.

Troubleshooting

Plugin diagnostics: Windows %TEMP%\dsh-speech-hook.log; macOS $TMPDIR/dsh-speech-hook.log

Repository layout

engine/                  harness-agnostic speech engine (PowerShell + SAPI5 / bash + say)
  speak.ps1 / speak.sh   clean + speak (the only seam any adapter needs)
  speech-prompt.ps1      blocking short announcement
  speech-summary.ps1     blocking reply-summary announcement
adapters/
  dsh/                   DSH web plugin + one-command installer
    speech-hook.js       session-event trigger (throttle/cancel + optional events + FIFO speech queue + WebSocket + Config-projected settings form)
    install.ps1          copies + registers + backs up
  claude-code/
    stop-hook.ps1        Claude Code Stop hook trigger
client/
  client.js              DSH browser bundle: turn-tail Speak/Stop button + Settings → dsh-speak settings page
docs/
  DESIGN.md              full design rationale, pitfalls, extension guide
scripts/                 tests + manual dev helpers (not shipped in the npm package)
  test-engine-static.js    engine invariants: .ps1 BOM + PowerShell parse, .sh LF (also run by prepublishOnly)
  test-engine-longtext.js  long-text guard contract for BOTH engines (speak.ps1 -DryRun / speak.sh's perl)
  test-speech-hook.js      host plugin: event triggers, queue, tool-error detail filter
  test-client-bundle.js    browser bundle: slot registration + component rendering
  test-settings-integration.js  Config-projection wiring (volatile refs + live writes) + removed-API guard
  session-log-dump.js      read a DSH session log (manual: what text reached the engine)
  settings-ui-check.py     Playwright UI check (manual: needs a running, authenticated dsh)
  dsh-events-check.py      Playwright disclosure check (manual)

Writing a new adapter

Three reference patterns exist: event-stream (DSH), stop-hook (Claude Code), agent-called (speech-summary.ps1 from a shell). In every case the adapter only needs to: capture the final reply text → invoke the engine. See docs/DESIGN.md §7.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.