Voice Memo Responses

Generate voice memos using TTS and send them as native voice notes.

Usage

Use the <voice> directive to send voice memos. No tool calls needed:

<actions>
  <voice>Hey, here's a quick update on that thing we discussed.</voice>
</actions>

With accompanying text:

<actions>
  <voice>Here's the summary as audio.</voice>
</actions>
And here it is in text form too!

Silent mode (heartbeats, cron)

For background tasks that need to send voice without a user message context:

OUTPUT=$(lettabot-tts "Your message here") || exit 1
lettabot-message send --file "$OUTPUT" --voice

When to Use Voice

• User sent a voice message and a voice reply feels natural
• User explicitly asks for a voice/audio response
• Short, conversational responses (voice is awkward for long technical content)

When NOT to Use Voice

• Code snippets, file paths, URLs, or structured data (these should be text)
• Long responses -- keep voice memos under ~30 seconds of speech
• When the user has indicated a preference for text
• When ELEVENLABSAPIKEY is not set

Notes

• Audio format is OGG Opus, which renders as native voice bubbles on Telegram and WhatsApp
• Discord and Slack will show it as a playable audio attachment
• Use cleanup="true" to delete the audio file after sending
• The data/outbound/ directory is the default allowed path for send-file directives
• The script uses $LETTABOTWORKINGDIR to output files to the correct directory
• On Telegram, if the user has voice message privacy enabled (Telegram Premium), the bot falls back to sending as an audio file instead of a voice bubble. Users can allow voice messages via Settings > Privacy and Security > Voice Messages.