Smallest AI — Ultra-Fast Voice Suite

Text-to-speech (sub-100ms) via Lightning v3.1 and speech-to-text (64ms TTFT) via Pulse.

Setup

1. Get API key from https://waves.smallest.ai → click "API Key" in left panel
2. Set

   SMALLEST_API_KEY

   in your environment:

export SMALLEST_API_KEY="your_key_here"

Defaults

• Default female voice:

  sophia

  (American English)
• Default male voice:

  robert

  (American English)
• Default language:

  en

• Default speed:

  1.0

• Default sample rate:

  24000

Voice Selection Rules

Follow these rules to select the voice:

1. If user explicitly names a voice (e.g. "use advika"), use that voice.
2. If user asks for a male voice, use the configured

   defaultVoiceMale

   .
3. If user asks for a female voice, use the configured

   defaultVoiceFemale

   .
4. If no gender preference, use

   defaultVoiceFemale

   (sophia by default).
5. For Hindi content: use

   advika

   (female) or

   vivaan

   (male).
6. For Spanish content: use

   camilla

   (female) or

   carlos

   (male).
7. For Tamil content: use

   anitha

   (female) or

   raju

   (male).

Always pass the configured

defaultLanguage

,

defaultSpeed

, and

defaultSampleRate

as

--lang

,

--speed

, and

--rate

flags unless the user overrides them.

Text-to-Speech

Generate speech audio from text using Lightning v3.1 model.

Shell (preferred — zero dependencies)

{baseDir}/scripts/tts.sh "Text to speak" --voice sophia --rate 24000 --speed 1.0 --lang en

Python (requires

pip install smallestai

or just

requests

)

python3 {baseDir}/scripts/tts.py "Text to speak" --voice sophia --speed 1.0 --lang en --out speech.wav

Voices

Voice	Gender	Accent	Best For
sophia	Female	American	General use (default)
robert	Male	American	Professional, reports (default)
advika	Female	Indian	Hindi content, code-switch
vivaan	Male	Indian	Bilingual English/Hindi
camilla	Female	Mexican/Latin	Spanish content
zara	Female	American	Conversational
melody	Female	American	Storytelling, greetings
arjun	Male	Indian	English/Hindi bilingual
stella	Female	American	Expressive, warm

80+ more voices available. List all with:

{baseDir}/scripts/voices.sh

Options

• --voice <id>

  : Voice identifier (default: sophia)

• --rate <hz>

  : Sample rate — 8000 | 16000 | 24000 | 44100 (default: 24000)

• --speed <n>

  : Playback speed 0.5–2.0 (default: 1.0)

• --lang <code>

  : Language code (default: en). See

  {baseDir}/references/languages.md

• --out <path>

  : Output file (default: auto-named

  media/tts_<timestamp>.wav

  )

Output

Scripts print

MEDIA: <filepath>

on success. OpenClaw sends this as an audio attachment.

Multilingual

Supports 30+ languages. Pass

--lang

with ISO code:

{baseDir}/scripts/tts.sh "नमस्ते, कैसे हैं आप?" --voice advika --lang hi
{baseDir}/scripts/tts.sh "Bonjour le monde" --voice sophia --lang fr
{baseDir}/scripts/tts.sh "Hola, buenos días" --voice camilla --lang es

Code-switching (mixing languages) works automatically — no flag needed:

{baseDir}/scripts/tts.sh "Hey, मुझे meeting remind कर दो" --voice advika --lang hi

Speech-to-Text

Transcribe audio files using Pulse model. Supports WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC.

Shell

{baseDir}/scripts/stt.sh /path/to/audio.wav
{baseDir}/scripts/stt.sh /path/to/audio.wav --diarize --timestamps --emotions

Python

python3 {baseDir}/scripts/stt.py /path/to/audio.wav --diarize --timestamps --lang en

Options

• --lang <code>

  : Language (default: en)

• --diarize

  : Identify different speakers

• --timestamps

  : Word-level timing

• --emotions

  : Detect emotional tone

Output

Returns JSON with

transcription

field. With

--diarize

, includes speaker labels per word.

When to Use

Trigger this skill when the user:

• Asks to "say", "speak", "read aloud", or "generate speech/audio"
• Wants a "voice message", "voice note", or "audio file"
• Asks to "transcribe", "convert speech/audio to text"
• Mentions "Smallest AI", "Lightning TTS", or "Pulse STT"
• Needs fast or low-latency speech generation
• Wants Hindi, Spanish, multilingual, or code-switched voice output
• Asks to compare TTS providers or benchmark latency

Error Handling

• Missing API key → tell user to set

  SMALLEST_API_KEY

• HTTP 401 → invalid or expired API key
• HTTP 429 → rate limited, wait and retry
• HTTP 400 → check text length (max ~5000 chars per request). Split long text into chunks.
• Empty audio → verify voice_id is valid

Limits

• Max text per request: ~5000 characters
• For longer text: split into sentences, synthesize each, concatenate with sox or ffmpeg
• Free tier: 30 minutes/month of TTS
• Basic ($5/mo): 3 hours of TTS + 1 voice clone