DSH Live Voice

Local-first, hands-free voice conversations for DSH — speak, listen, answer prompts, and keep working without touching the computer.

DSH Live Voice coordinates the microphone, composer, assistant messages, structured questions, and speech output in one plugin — without letting listening and speaking compete with each other. Once voice conversation mode is running, DSH can narrate responses and questions, capture your spoken answers, and continue the conversation while your hands stay free.

Install

Install the public repository through dsh.pub into your DSH web profile:

npx dshpub add victorwads/dsh-live-voice --profile web

The installer resolves the public repository to an exact commit before adding the bundle. Open DSH Settings → Live Voice after the next normal DSH startup.

Why this project exists and Acknowledgments

Listening and speaking should work together, so you can interrupt and be heard without the assistant’s voice getting in the way. Read the story behind the project.

A heartfelt thank you to GooDAnDReaDY for dsh-voice and Alan2Z for dsh-speak. Your projects solved my voice needs in DSH for a while, and I am grateful for the work you shared. Eventually, I reached a point where I needed one codebase to coordinate both listening and speaking. Read the full story.

Features

	Capability
🎙️	Voice typing directly into the DSH composer
👐	Hands-free conversations: speak, hear responses, and continue without touching the computer
❓	Spoken DSH structured questions with automatic capture and submission of your answer
💬	Continuous voice conversations that stay active while you navigate between chats
🗣️	Configurable voice commands for sending, queueing, clearing, muting, resuming, stopping speech, and ending a conversation
🧠	Browser SpeechRecognition, local loopback whisper.cpp, or Qwen3-ASR on Apple MLX
🔊	Browser speech synthesis, native macOS say, or Qwen3-TTS on Apple MLX
⏱️	Manual or automatic sending after configurable silence
🫁	Stable-silence delay prevents breathing pauses from starting assistant speech
🎧	Open-microphone mode for headphones
🔒	Gated microphone mode for speakers
✋	Pause, resume, stop, and manual interruption controls
🔈	Play individual assistant messages on demand
🏠	Whisper audio reaches the local server only through the authenticated DSH host

Hands-free experience

Start voice conversation mode and choose an automatic delivery mode to keep a conversation moving without returning to the keyboard. DSH Live Voice can:

1. Listen for your next message and deliver it after the configured silence period.
2. Read assistant responses aloud as they arrive.
3. Narrate DSH structured questions, listen for your next spoken response, and submit it as a custom answer.
4. Keep voice conversation mode active when you move between chats until you explicitly end it.
5. Accept configurable spoken commands for common conversation controls.

The hands-free experience coordinates speech input and output locally when you select local engines. The DSH language model itself may still be remote.

Conversation flow

The assistant never starts automatic playback while you are speaking. If a response is already waiting — including another assistant message — it waits until you finish and the configured continuous-silence delay has passed.

Speakers — gated listening (default)

Listening and playback take turns so the assistant does not hear its own voice.

sequenceDiagram
    participant Interface
    actor Você
    actor Assistente

    Note over Interface,Assistente: Aguardando você falar…
    activate Você
    Você->>Assistente: Começa a falar
    Assistente-->>Você: Escuta enquanto você fala
    Note over Interface,Assistente: Você parou de falar
    opt Envio manual
        Você->>Interface: Revisa a mensagem reconhecida
        Interface-->>Você: Envia quando estiver pronto
    end
    opt Envio automático
        Note over Você,Assistente: Envia após a contagem de silêncio
    end
    deactivate Você
    Você->>Assistente: Entrega sua mensagem
    Assistente-->>Você: Resposta pronta — aguarda silêncio contínuo
    Assistente-->>Você: Para de escutar
    activate Assistente
    Assistente->>Você: Fala a resposta em voz alta
    deactivate Assistente
    Note over Interface,Assistente: Escutando novamente — aguardando você falar…

Headphones — open microphone

The microphone remains open during playback, allowing your voice to pause the assistant.

Other conversation settings

• Sending mode: review and send manually by default, or send automatically after a configurable silence countdown.
• Assistant response delay: choose how long you must remain silent before automatic playback starts; speaking again restarts the wait.
• Automatic assistant speech: turn automatic playback of new assistant messages on or off.
• Sent-message interruption: sending another message does not stop current audio by default, but you can enable that behavior.
• Manual playback: play any individual assistant message on demand without waiting for the automatic-playback delay.

Local-first architecture

• Recognition: Browser SpeechRecognition, loopback whisper.cpp HTTP, or Qwen3-ASR through a host-local Apple MLX server.
• Speech output: browser/device audio, native macOS say, or host-local Qwen3-TTS with WAV playback in the browser.
• Whisper transport: complete WAV utterances through authenticated same-origin DSH routes.
• Privacy: raw audio and transcripts are not logged by default.

Speech processing can run locally, but the DSH language model may still be remote.

Qwen3 HTTP engine

When a compatible Qwen3 speech API is already running on the DSH host, choose Qwen3 ASR — local MLX server under Speech recognition and Qwen3 TTS — local MLX server under Speech output. Configure its base URL in DSH Settings → Live Voice. The Qwen server may use any HTTP or HTTPS base URL reachable from the DSH host. The plugin supports the OminiX-API contract and standard OpenAI-style speech endpoints at GET /health, POST /v1/audio/transcriptions, and POST /v1/audio/speech; it does not install, start, stop, or manage that external service or its model weights.

License

GPL-3.0-only. Commercial use and redistribution are allowed subject to the GPL. Third-party speech engines and models may have separate licenses.

Keywords

dsh, dsh-plugin, deepseek-harness, local-first, local-voice, hands-free, hands-free-ai, hands-free-assistant, voice-control, voice-commands, voice-assistant, voice-conversation, conversational-ai, continuous-conversation, voice-dictation, spoken-prompts, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speech-recognition, speech-synthesis, stt, tts, whisper, whisper-cpp, qwen3-asr, qwen3-tts, mlx, apple-silicon, web-speech-api, macos-say, turn-taking, voice-interruption, silence-detection