# Deploying read-aloud (Piper TTS) to millenia

Petal's read-aloud generates audio with a local **Piper** neural-TTS server and
transcodes it to mp3 with **ffmpeg**. Both run on millenia (192.168.1.212);
nothing leaves the box. If Piper is down or `TTS_ENDPOINT` is unset, the frontend
falls back to the browser's Web Speech API automatically.

## 1. Piper as a systemd service (one-time)

```bash
# from this repo, on your workstation:
scp deploy/piper.service deploy/setup-piper.sh 192.168.1.212:/tmp/
ssh 192.168.1.212 'cd /tmp && sudo ./setup-piper.sh'
```

`setup-piper.sh` creates `~/piper/venv`, installs `piper-tts[http]`, downloads the
`en_US-amy-medium` voice into `~/piper/voices`, installs+enables `piper.service`
(loopback :5005), and smoke-tests it. Idempotent.

Check it any time: `systemctl status piper`, `journalctl -u piper -f`.

## 2. Point petal at Piper + redeploy the binary

Add to petal's environment (its `.env` or launch env):

```
TTS_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:5005
TTS_VOICE_EN=en_US-amy-medium
TTS_AUDIO_FORMAT=mp3
```

Then ship the rebuilt binary (`go build -o petal ./cmd/server` already done) and
restart the petal `:8088` session. Confirm the log line:
`read-aloud enabled (TTS endpoint=http://127.0.0.1:5005)`.

## 3. Verify

```bash
# on millenia — end-to-end through petal, including ffmpeg transcode:
curl -sf -X POST localhost:8088/api/tts \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"text":"hello there","lang":"en-US"}' -o /tmp/petal-tts.mp3 \
  && file /tmp/petal-tts.mp3   # expect: Audio file ... MPEG ... layer III
```

- Second identical call is served from the cache (`~/petal/.../data/tts/*.mp3`).
- A language with no configured instance returns 404 → client uses Web Speech.
- Browser check via the uitest harness (`~/petal/uitest`): tap a word in the
  WordCard / select a sentence and hit speak — expect the natural Piper voice.

## Chinese voice (live)

Each Piper HTTP server loads ONE model, so Chinese runs as a **second instance**:
`piper-zh.service` on :5006 with `zh_CN-huayan-medium`. Deployed via:

```bash
scp deploy/piper-zh.service 192.168.1.212:~/.config/systemd/user/
ssh 192.168.1.212 'export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u)
  ~/piper/venv/bin/python -m piper.download_voices zh_CN-huayan-medium --data-dir ~/piper/voices
  systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable --now piper-zh.service'
```

Then in petal's `start.sh`: `TTS_ENDPOINT_ZH=http://127.0.0.1:5006` and
`TTS_VOICE_ZH=zh_CN-huayan-medium`. The handler maps language → instance from config,
so adding more languages is just another instance + env pair (no code change).