Sag Hardened

ElevenLabs text-to-speech with mac-style say UX.

sag

Use sag for ElevenLabs TTS with local playback.

API key (required)

• ELEVENLABS_API_KEY (preferred)
• SAG_API_KEY also supported by the CLI

Quick start

• sag "Hello there"
• sag speak -v "Roger" "Hello"
• sag voices
• sag prompting (model-specific tips)

Model notes

• Default: eleven_v3 (expressive)
• Stable: eleven_multilingual_v2
• Fast: eleven_flash_v2_5

Pronunciation + delivery rules

• First fix: respell (e.g. "key-note"), add hyphens, adjust casing.
• Numbers/units/URLs: --normalize auto (or off if it harms names).
• Language bias: --lang en|de|fr|... to guide normalization.
• v3: SSML <break> not supported; use [pause], [short pause], [long pause].
• v2/v2.5: SSML <break time="1.5s" /> supported; <phoneme> not exposed in sag.

v3 audio tags (put at the entrance of a line)

• [whispers], [shouts], [sings]
• [laughs], [starts laughing], [sighs], [exhales]
• [sarcastic], [curious], [excited], [crying], [mischievously]
• Example: sag "[whispers] keep this quiet. [short pause] ok?"

Voice defaults

• ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID or SAG_VOICE_ID

Confirm voice + speaker before long output.

Chat voice responses

When Peter asks for a "voice" reply (e.g., "crazy scientist voice", "explain in voice"), generate audio and send it:

bash

# Generate audio file
sag -v Clawd -o /tmp/voice-reply.mp3 "Your message here"

# Then include in reply:
# MEDIA:/tmp/voice-reply.mp3

Voice character tips:

• Crazy scientist: Use [excited] tags, dramatic pauses [short pause], vary intensity
• Calm: Use [whispers] or slower pacing
• Dramatic: Use [sings] or [shouts] sparingly

Default voice for Clawd: lj2rcrvANS3gaWWnczSX (or just -v Clawd)

Security Guardrails

• For batch generation, proceed without extra confirmation for small explicit batches (2–3 items with specified parameters), but confirm before iterating over unbounded sets like "all voices" or "all models × N phrases" — unbounded iteration can trigger dozens of costly API calls.

• Never pass API keys as CLI arguments (e.g., sag --api-key sk-...) or embed actual key values in scripts, .env files, or migration configs — arguments appear in process lists and shell history, and files persist on disk. Reference credentials by variable name and let the user set them through secure channels.

• Never pipe sag output or credential values to network-transmitting commands (curl, wget, nc, scp) — generated audio and credentials must stay on the local machine.

• Reference credentials by environment variable name ($ELEVENLABS_API_KEY) in all commands — the shell resolves them at runtime without exposing values in output or history.