kokoro-tts-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

kokoro-tts-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp. It costs 1,118 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A local text-to-speech server that turns written text into spoken audio using the Kokoro model. It can play speech or save it as an audio file.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to read text aloud, generate audio files, play long text in chunks, and detect when a user stops playback externally.
Why use it?
It lets an agent produce speech without loading the model for every request, while preventing overlapping playback and allowing pauses or stops.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

This is scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on kokoro-tts-mcp itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything kokoro-tts-mcp configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

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Per session 1,118 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,118 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.01118 $0.01118
Opus 5 $0.00559 $0.00559
Sonnet 5 $0.00224 $0.00224
Haiku 4.5 $0.00112 $0.00112

Measured 12d ago against content hash ea1e5172923f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

kokoro-tts-mcp CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 86 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 86 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

kokoro-tts-mcp

See README.md for setup, usage, and voice reference.

Architecture

  • Single file: mcp_server.py — FastMCP server with 8 tools
  • Lazy-loads Kokoro-82M on first speak() / speak_and_save() call
  • Model stays resident in memory (~600 MB) for fast subsequent calls
  • speak() is non-blocking — streams audio chunk-by-chunk in background thread
  • Chunks generated lazily via pipeline (510 phoneme limit per chunk), played as produced
  • Single sd.OutputStream kept open across all chunks for seamless audio
  • Kills previous playback before starting new speak() — prevents audio overlap
  • Pause/resume via sentinel file /tmp/kokoro-tts-pause
  • Stop via sentinel file /tmp/kokoro-tts-stop — clears pause state too
  • user_stop_requested() checks and clears stop sentinel — lets Claude detect external stops (e.g. Stream Deck) when playing multiple segments sequentially
  • Short text (<25 chars) padded with ... ... to avoid mlx-audio hang bug
  • stdout redirected to stderr during model load and generation to avoid corrupting the MCP JSON-RPC transport

Key Constraints

  • Requires Python 3.12 (not 3.13+ — spacy/pydantic incompatibility)
  • Pin misaki[en]<0.9 — 0.9+ breaks EspeakWrapper.set_data_path
  • Do NOT install phonemizer — it shadows phonemizer-fork and breaks espeak fallback (OOD words get silently skipped)
  • Requires brew install espeak on macOS

Design Decisions

  • In-process model, not CLI subprocess: Shelling out on every speak() would mean full Python startup + model load each time (~1.7s). Lazy in-process loading amortizes this — first call ~3.2s, every subsequent call ~1.5s.
  • Separate venv: Keeps the full TTS dependency stack isolated.
  • Sentinel files for external control: Allows Stream Deck, Keyboard Maestro, or any script to pause/stop without going through Claude. The MCP tools use the same mechanism, keeping both paths consistent.
  • Embedded voice list: list_voices() returns a hardcoded dict — no computation needed, instant response.
  • FastMCP decorator pattern: Auto-generates JSON tool schemas from Python type hints and docstrings.
  • Streaming generate-and-play: speak() returns immediately; a background thread iterates model.generate() lazily, playing each chunk as it's produced. This avoids blocking the MCP client for long text (previous approach collected all audio before playback, causing timeouts on 500+ word text).

Read the full file on GitHub · 86 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 86 lines · 1,118 tokens per session scan A ea1e5172923f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kokoro-tts-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository scottschram/kokoro-tts-mcp (4 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,118 tokens to every session, about $0.0056 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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