Castreader Openclaw Skill

Read any web page aloud with natural AI voices. Extract article text from any URL and convert it to audio (MP3). Use when the user wants to: listen to a webpage, read an article aloud, convert URL to audio, text-to-speech for a link, read this page to me, listen to this article.

CastReader — Read Any Web Page Aloud

Setup (once per session)

cd <skill-directory> && npm install --silent 2>/dev/null

How to find target (chatId)

User messages look like: [Telegram username id:8716240840 ...] The number after id: is the target. You MUST use this number in every message tool call. Example: target is "8716240840".

When user sends a URL, follow these steps:

Step 1: Extract article

node scripts/read-url.js "<url>" 0

Returns: { title, language, totalParagraphs, totalCharacters, paragraphs[] }

Step 2: Show info + ask user to choose

Reply with this text:

📖 {title}
🌐 {language} · 📝 {totalParagraphs} paragraphs · 📊 {totalCharacters} chars

📋 Summary:
{write 2-3 sentence summary from paragraphs}

Reply a number to choose:
1️⃣ Listen to full article (~{totalCharacters} chars, ~{Math.ceil(totalCharacters / 200)} sec to generate)
2️⃣ Listen to summary only (~{summary_char_count} chars, ~{Math.ceil(summary_char_count / 200)} sec to generate)

STOP. Wait for user to reply 1 or 2.

Step 3a: User chose 1 (full article)

Reply: 🎙️ Generating full audio (~{totalCharacters} chars, ~{Math.ceil(totalCharacters / 200)} seconds)...

node scripts/read-url.js "<url>" all

Then send the audio file using the message tool:

{"action":"send", "target":"<chatId>", "channel":"telegram", "filePath":"<audioFile>", "caption":"🔊 {title}"}

Reply: ✅ Done!

Step 3b: User chose 2 (summary only)

Reply: 🎙️ Generating summary audio...

Save the SAME summary text you showed in Step 2 to a file and generate:

echo "<summary text>" > /tmp/castreader-summary.txt
node scripts/generate-text.js /tmp/castreader-summary.txt <language>

Then send the audio file using the message tool:

{"action":"send", "target":"<chatId>", "channel":"telegram", "filePath":"/tmp/castreader-summary.mp3", "caption":"📋 Summary: {title}"}

Reply: ✅ Done!

Rules

• ALWAYS extract first (index=0), show info, wait for user choice. Never skip.
• ALWAYS send audio files using the message tool with target (numeric chatId) and channel ("telegram"). Never just print the file path.
• Do NOT use built-in TTS tools. ONLY use read-url.js and generate-text.js.
• Do NOT use web_fetch. ONLY use read-url.js.