caw is a pip-installable CLI TTS tool.

It is designed to:

• take text from the command line
• optionally select a scene-specific reference voice with --scene
• call a configurable OpenAI-compatible TTS endpoint
• write wav audio bytes to stdout by default
• optionally play or save the generated audio
• discover local reference voices from src/caw/assets/*.wav

pipx install caw-tts

Or:

python3 -m pip install caw-tts

For local development, run pipx install . or python3 -m pip install . from the repository root.

caw help
caw setup
caw upgrade
caw scenes
caw "你好，这是一段测试语音。" > out.wav
caw --play "你好，这是一段测试语音。"
caw --play /usr/bin/aplay "你好，这是一段测试语音。"
caw -o out.wav "你好，这是一段测试语音。"

caw setup uses questionary + rich for an interactive configuration flow. It sets the API key environment variable name, Base URL, TTS model, and default scene. It can also store an optional PULSE_SERVER value for playback, for example unix:/tmp/pulse-socket.

If no config file exists, running caw "text" opens caw setup first. Reference voices are local-only: put .wav files under src/caw/assets/, using filenames without spaces. The filename stem is the scene name. If no reference audio is found, caw prints a prompt explaining where to add it.

caw stores config at:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/caw/config.json

Default fallback:

~/.config/caw/config.json

Generated audio is not saved unless --output/-o is provided. Without --play or --output, caw writes WAV bytes to stdout.

The TTS config stores:

{
  "tts": {
    "api_key_env": "TTS_API_KEY",
    "base_url": "https://example.com/v1/",
    "model": "your-model"
  },
  "audio": {
    "pulse_server": "unix:/tmp/pulse-socket"
  }
}

If you use caw on NVIDIA DGX Spark, a driverless USB speaker is the simplest playback option.

DGX Spark exposes USB-C ports and commonly works with USB Audio Class output devices without extra vendor drivers. If caw generates a .wav file correctly but you do not hear audio, verify that the USB speaker is detected and selected as the active output device.

Useful checks:

aplay -l
lsusb
pactl list short sinks
speaker-test -c 2 -t wav
aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

If the USB speaker appears in pactl list short sinks, set it as the default output:

pactl set-default-sink <sink_name>

Local quality checks are enforced with pre-commit.

Run:

pre-commit run --all-files

The active checks are:

• ruff-check
• ruff-format
• pyrefly-check

The repository keeps test code and CI command code separate:

• application source: src/caw/
• tests: tests/

The type check is executed through uv from inside the package directory:

uv run --frozen --with pyrefly==0.47.0 pyrefly check src/caw

GitHub Actions CI is split into focused workflows:

• CI Tests
• CI Ruff
• CI Pyrefly
• CI Smoke
• Publish

Each workflow runs the tool command directly instead of wrapping CI steps in custom Python helper scripts.

If you change packaging, CLI entrypoints, Python source under src/caw, or tests under tests/, keep all workflows passing.

Publishing uses .github/workflows/publish.yml.

Configure this repository secret before publishing:

PYPI_API_TOKEN

The secret value should be a PyPI API token for the caw-tts project. Publishing runs when a GitHub Release is published, and can also be started manually from the Publish workflow page.