User Voice

Voice: STT And TTS

BLXCode supports voice input and voice replies in the agent panel.

• STT means speech-to-text: BLXCode records your microphone, transcribes the audio, and inserts the transcript into the agent composer.
• TTS means text-to-speech: when a turn started from voice input finishes, BLXCode can synthesize the assistant's final answer and play it back.

Voice features are available in the Tauri desktop app. They are not available in frontend-only trunk serve mode because microphone capture, provider keys, and native cache paths are handled by the Tauri backend.

Requirements

You need:

• A working system microphone.
• Microphone permission granted to BLXCode or the development shell.
• An API key for the configured voice provider.
• Network access to the configured STT/TTS provider.

Voice API keys are set under Settings → API Keys (OpenAI, OpenRouter, AWS/Polly). The voice column in Settings → BLXCode Agent shows configured/missing status only.

• OpenAI — six OpenAI TTS voices selectable.
• OpenRouter — STT/TTS models; voice picks show OpenAI names disabled with a hint.
• AWS — six Polly voices when the AWS key is set.

Default Settings

The default voice settings are conservative:

Setting	Default
STT provider	OpenAI
STT model	gpt-4o-mini-transcribe
Recording sample rate	16000 Hz
TTS provider	OpenAI
TTS model	gpt-4o-mini-tts
TTS voice	nova
TTS autoplay	enabled
Post-STT behavior	auto-send
STT language	follow app locale
Push-to-talk hotkey	Space

Configure Voice

Open Settings (center tab) → BLXCode Agent → Voice section.

Settings → App holds STT language mode and push-to-talk hotkey only.

You can configure:

• STT/TTS provider and models (shared provider dropdown).
• Recording quality: low 16000, standard 24000, or high 48000 Hz.
• TTS voice (fixed catalog per provider) and gender filter.
• TTS autoplay on or off.
• Whether STT should auto-send or only fill a draft.

See Settings.

STT Language Modes

BLXCode can send an optional language hint with transcription requests:

• Follow app: uses the current UI locale and reduces it to a primary ISO-639-1 language code, such as de from de-DE.
• Auto detect: sends no language hint and lets the provider detect speech language.
• Manual: sends the custom language code you enter.

Recording From The Agent Panel

Use the voice orb in the agent panel:

• Hold the orb longer than a short threshold to record push-to-talk style; release to transcribe.
• Click quickly to toggle recording; click again to stop and transcribe.
• Press Space or Enter while the orb is focused to start/stop recording.
• Press Escape while recording to cancel.

The global push-to-talk hotkey also starts recording when enabled. A plain key such as Space is ignored while typing in editable fields, so normal text input remains safe.

Auto-Send Versus Draft

When post-STT behavior is auto-send, BLXCode submits the transcript to the agent immediately.

When post-STT behavior is draft, BLXCode inserts the transcript into the compose field so you can edit it before sending.

Voice Replies

When a prompt came from voice input and TTS is enabled, BLXCode synthesizes the final assistant answer after the model turn completes. The generated MP3 is sent back to the frontend as a voice_ready event and played in the agent panel.

Text answers still appear normally. If TTS fails, the text answer remains available and BLXCode reports the TTS error separately.

Supported Providers

STT

• OpenAI: https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/transcriptions
• OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/audio/transcriptions

BLXCode sends WAV audio as multipart form data with response_format=text.

TTS

TTS currently uses OpenAI's speech endpoint:

• OpenAI: https://api.openai.com/v1/audio/speech

OpenRouter TTS is not currently supported by the backend, even though OpenRouter can be used for STT.

Voice Catalog

The OpenAI voice catalog currently exposed in BLXCode is:

Voice	Gender Hint
alloy	neutral
ash	male
ballad	female
coral	female
echo	male
fable	neutral
nova	female
onyx	male
sage	female
shimmer	female

The gender label is only a UI filtering hint.

Privacy Notes

During recording, BLXCode writes a temporary WAV file under the app cache directory:

<app-cache>/voice/<turn-id>.wav

After transcription finishes, BLXCode deletes the WAV file. Cancelled recordings are also removed. The audio is still sent to the selected remote STT provider for transcription, so use a provider and model whose data policy fits your workflow.