voice-preflight

Voice Preflight

CALL-E speaks your task text to a person on the phone. You cannot hear it first. The platform exposes no voice or provider field, so the only way to know how a script sounds is to render the same text yourself.

This skill covers doing that with a provider you already pay for, then gating the call on what the audio and the text actually show.

When to use it

Before any call whose success depends on a specific string reaching the callee. That includes a one-time code a person has to read back, a callback number, a disclosure a rule requires you to speak, an amount, plus a reference somebody will repeat to you. Also use it whenever a task has been edited, because the failure this catches is a line disappearing during a tidy-up.

Skip it for a call whose script carries no such string. A general enquiry has nothing to survive verbatim.

The procedure

1. Declare what must survive. Write the script file with a locked entry per critical line, each with the exact text and a reason. The reason is quoted back in the refusal, so it travels with the failure instead of living in somebody's head.
2. Set the spoken budget. maxSpokenSeconds is your number, not a default. Pick the length past which the callee will hang up.
3. Preview first. preview reads no credential and contacts nothing. It shows what would be sent, where the credential would go and the offline findings.
4. Render and listen. render synthesises through your provider and measures the audio. Open the file. The tool tells you where to listen, it does not tell you what you will hear.
5. Gate on the exit code. 0 means nothing blocked, 20 means the script should not go out as written, 30 is a config or input error, 40 means the provider refused.

export ELEVENLABS_API_KEY="..."
npm run voice -- preview --script my-script.json --provider examples/provider.elevenlabs.json
npm run voice -- render  --script my-script.json --provider examples/provider.elevenlabs.json \
  --allow-host api.elevenlabs.io