speak

name	speak
description	Text-to-speech using Kokoro local TTS. Use when the user wants to convert text to audio, read aloud, or generate speech.

speak

Convert text to speech locally with Kokoro TTS.

Quick start

# Text string → audio file
kokoro-tts <(echo "Hello world") hello.wav --voice af_sarah

# Text file → audio
kokoro-tts article.txt out.wav --voice af_heart

# Chinese
kokoro-tts story.txt out.wav --voice zf_xiaoni --lang cmn

# EPUB / PDF → chapter audio files
kokoro-tts book.epub --split-output ./chapters/ --format mp3 --voice bf_emma

# Voice blending (60-40 mix)
kokoro-tts input.txt out.wav --voice "af_sarah:60,am_adam:40"

# Adjust speed
kokoro-tts input.txt out.wav --voice am_adam --speed 1.2

# Stream playback (no file saved)
kokoro-tts input.txt --stream --voice af_nova

Install

uv tool install kokoro-tts

Model files (kokoro-v1.0.onnx, voices-v1.0.bin) must be in the working directory. Download once:

wget https://github.com/nazdridoy/kokoro-tts/releases/download/v1.0.0/kokoro-v1.0.onnx
wget https://github.com/nazdridoy/kokoro-tts/releases/download/v1.0.0/voices-v1.0.bin

Voices at a glance

Region	Female	Male
🇺🇸 en-us	af_alloy af_heart af_sarah af_nova ...	am_adam am_echo am_michael ...
🇬🇧 en-gb	bf_alice bf_emma bf_lily ...	bm_daniel bm_george ...
🇨🇳 cmn	zf_xiaoni zf_xiaoxiao zf_xiaoyi ...	zm_yunxi zm_yunyang ...
🇯🇵 ja	jf_alpha jf_nezumi ...	jm_kumo
🇫🇷 fr-fr	ff_siwis	—
🇮🇹 it	if_sara	im_nicola

For full voice list, options, and input format details, see reference.md.