Adding Voice to Claude Code (with Audio Ducking)

Claude Code Can Talk

I spend a lot of time in Claude Code. Reading responses while coding is fine, but sometimes I want to hear what Claude is saying while I’m looking at something else.

claude-code-tts by Chris Goff does exactly this. It uses Kokoro TTS, a fast local text-to-speech model, to read Claude’s responses aloud. Hooks into Claude Code’s event system - when Claude finishes responding, it extracts the text and speaks it.

Note: The upstream project uses tac (GNU coreutils) which doesn’t exist on macOS. My fork replaces it with tail -r.

Audio Ducking

With TTS working, I had a new problem: I like music while coding. Claude talking over music is hard to hear.

CarPlay solved this with audio ducking - when navigation speaks, music volume drops, then comes back. I added this for Claude Code TTS.

The implementation controls Apple Music directly via AppleScript:

# Duck to 5% before TTS starts
osascript -e "tell application \"Music\" to set sound volume to 5"

# Restore when TTS finishes
osascript -e "tell application \"Music\" to set sound volume to $original"

Only Apple Music’s internal volume changes - system volume stays the same, so TTS plays at full volume while music is ducked. A background process monitors when TTS finishes and restores the volume automatically.

Configuration

Set in ~/.claude/settings.json:

Try It

My fork with audio ducking: github.com/ktaletsk/claude-code-tts

Original: git.sr.ht/~cg/claude-code-tts

git clone https://github.com/ktaletsk/claude-code-tts
cd claude-code-tts
./install.sh

Now I can code, listen to music, and hear Claude - all without fighting for audio space.