Speko for OpenClaw

Speko is one API in front of the speech stack. This plugin wires it into OpenClaw at four seams from a single key: the model provider, the speech provider, audio transcription, and two tools that make the routing inspectable.

Every request is routed on Speko's own benchmark readings — measured latency, measured quality, published price, per language — across 50+ models, with failover when a vendor refuses. Telephony is one thing you can do with that; it is not the point.

Install

openclaw plugins install clawhub:openclaw-plugin-speko
export SPEKO_API_KEY=sk_live_...

Then pick speko/auto as your model, or point speech and transcription at speko.

What it registers

speko_routing_preview is the one worth knowing about. It answers "which model will you use, and why" before anything is spent:

TTS route: Inworld inworld-tts-2 (inworld:inworld-tts-2)
reason: best-for-objective | objective: balanced | evidence: measured
language: en (measured)
benchmark window: 2026-07-21..2026-08-05
passed over: Deepgram aura-2 (0.734), Smallest AI lightning_v3.1 (0.708), Speechify simba-3.2 (0.688)

Configure

The API key carries its own routing policy, so the config block is only needed to override it. Anything you set here is sent as an X-Speko-* header, and a request header always beats the key's policy.

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "speko": {
        "config": {
          "language": "en",
          "objective": "quality",
          "maxPrice": 40,
          "deny": ["elevenlabs:eleven_v3"],
          "tts": { "instructions": "Warm, unhurried." }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Get pin ids from speko_models or GET /v1/models. Only rows with routable: true can be selected or pinned.

Notes worth reading before you debug something

• Speech asks for WAV on purpose. The router's default body is headerless raw PCM at 24 kHz, which no player opens, and it refuses encoded formats such as mp3 outright.
• Speech uses the buffered route, not the streaming one. /v1/audio/speech/stream has no empty-body guard: under concurrency it can commit a 200 and then return zero bytes, while the buffered route answers 502 with a failover count. The plugin also rejects a 200 that carries no audio, so a silent failure surfaces as an error rather than as silence.
• OpenClaw's cost column is an approximation here. Speko publishes one blended USD/1M-token figure per model rather than separate input and output prices, so both sides carry the same number. A model with no published price reports zero and says so in its label.
• Context windows are conservative defaults. /v1/models does not publish a per-vendor window, and the router holds the real one, so this plugin advertises 128k rather than guessing higher.
• Nine languages are enabled on the router — en, ar, de, es, fr, hi, nb, ta, te. /v1/models advertises wider coverage than the router accepts, so a row can claim zh while X-Speko-Language: zh is refused. Both tools now surface the enabled list in the error instead of a bare 400.
• The language default is deliberate. Without a language header the router falls back to whatever the API key's policy carries, which is invisible from OpenClaw and is not always English — a first run could quietly come back in another language and read as a bug. So the plugin sends en unless you set language. Use "auto" to hand the choice back to the key.
• Trusting the plugin for agent runs needs one line. OpenClaw will not auto-trust a non-bundled plugin's tools until you allow it: "plugins": { "allow": ["speko"] }.
• Telephony is a different host and a different key. Outbound AI calls live on the platform API at api.speko.dev with a platform key, not the router key. The companion speko skill covers that surface.

Develop

bun install
bunx tsc -p tsconfig.json
bun run test

To load it from source into a throwaway OpenClaw state dir:

OPENCLAW_HOME=/tmp/oc OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR=/tmp/oc/state OPENCLAW_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/oc/openclaw.json \
  openclaw plugins install . && openclaw plugins inspect speko --runtime --json

License

MIT