Utterlane Live

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/479a4c5e-43c9-4d59-802d-701c07f39b6d

Voice assistants assume there is one user. Real rooms have several. Utterlane Live keeps track of the people talking — by name when they introduce themselves, as "Person 3" when they don't — so your agent knows who asked, who answered, and when to stay quiet.

Features

• Hands-free conversation — voice activity detection, local Whisper speech-to-text, streaming local text-to-speech, interrupt it any time by talking (barge-in).

• Speaker naming from speech — "I'm Tuncer" names a voice; "Ahmet, go ahead" makes the next new voice Ahmet? (confirmed after a couple of turns); "I'm not Ahmet, I'm Mehmet" corrects it, retroactively. Voices that never introduce themselves become Person 3, Person 4…

• Consent-first voice memory — it asks "Would you like me to recognize your voice next time?"; only a clear spoken yes right after the question stores the voice print, AES-256-GCM encrypted with a key kept in your OS keychain. Delete any time.

• Group etiquette — alone, it answers everything; in a group it only speaks when addressed ("Lena, …"), and never cuts in when you hand the floor to someone else.

• Bring your own brain — OpenAI, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Ollama, LM Studio, any OpenAI-compatible server, or your own webhook. Or none at all (listen-only).

• MCP server built in — any MCP client (OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude, Cursor, Open WebUI…) can read the room (recent_turns, wait_for_next_turn, list_speakers) and speak (speak).

• Only introduced people can command your agent — configurable (all, named, enrolled), on by default for tool-using agents.

• Runs on ordinary computers — Windows 10/11 (x64), macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon and Linux (x86_64); an NVIDIA GPU makes it faster but is not required. Turkish and English.

Related MCP server: VoxMesh

Quick start

Windows — download the ZIP (or git clone), then double-click Utterlane.cmd. The first run installs everything into that folder and opens the app.

git clone https://github.com/tuncertimur/utterlane-live
cd utterlane-live
.\Utterlane.cmd

macOS / Linux

git clone https://github.com/tuncertimur/utterlane-live
cd utterlane-live
./utterlane.sh

The installer puts a private copy of uv and Python 3.12 inside the folder (nothing system-wide), picks the CUDA or CPU build automatically, and downloads the models it needs, hash-verified: about 1 GB on a CPU-only computer, about 2 GB with an NVIDIA GPU (see docs/MODELS.md). Then open http://127.0.0.1:8765, press Start once (browsers need one click for audio) and talk.

To give it a brain, copy .env.example to .env and choose one block — for example OPENAI_API_KEY=…, or UTTERLANE_BRAIN=ollama with UTTERLANE_BRAIN_MODEL=qwen3:8b for a free, fully local setup. Without a brain it still transcribes and labels speakers. .env is git-ignored; keys can also live in config.env in the data folder (the doctor command prints where), so they never sit in a folder you might zip or share.

Options go after the launcher (.\Utterlane.cmd … on Windows, ./utterlane.sh … elsewhere):

./utterlane.sh --language en      # English (default: Turkish)
./utterlane.sh --voice george     # pick a voice (docs/MODELS.md)
./utterlane.sh doctor             # check the installation

Connect your agent

An Agent Skill teaches agents how to use the room: npx skills add tuncertimur/utterlane-live -g -a openclaw hermes-agent claude-code codex. Full setup: docs/INTEGRATIONS.md.

How it works

 browser mic ──► 16 kHz PCM ──► VAD (Silero) ──► one turn
                                                  ├─► Whisper (local GPU/CPU) ──────► text
                                                  └─► voice print (TitaNet-L + ResNet34, local)
                                                        └─► who? known / new "Person N" / unclear
 "I'm Tuncer", "Ahmet, go ahead", "I'm not Ahmet" ──► names (text) + consent ──► encrypted profiles
 [Speaker: Tuncer] text ──► brain (OpenAI / OpenClaw / Hermes / local / webhook) ──► reply
 reply ──► sentence chunks ──► Pocket TTS (local, streaming) ──► browser speaker (barge-in aware)
                     MCP / REST: recent_turns · wait_for_next_turn · list_speakers · speak

• One microphone, several people: each turn is embedded with two speaker models and matched against the people heard so far; a fast hand-off inside one segment is split at the speaker change.

• Uncertain? It says Unclear instead of guessing. Very short turns ("yes", "hm") are attributed to the previous speaker as a marked guess.

• Your agent never hears audio — only text with speaker labels.

Performance (measured)

Measured on consented recordings of two Turkish speakers plus public FLEURS voices (Windows 11, i9-10900X, RTX 3080). Your room and microphone will differ.

The model is chosen automatically: large-v3-turbo with an NVIDIA GPU or a CPU with ≥ 16 threads, otherwise small (set UTTERLANE_STT_MODEL to override).

Privacy and safety

• Audio, transcripts and voice prints stay on your computer. A brain only receives conversation text with speaker labels.

• Voice prints are stored only after a spoken yes, encrypted (AES-256-GCM, key in Windows Credential Manager / macOS Keychain / Secret Service), and can be deleted in the UI or with ./utterlane.sh profiles delete-all (.\Utterlane.cmd profiles delete-all on Windows).

• A voice match is a label, not authentication. Recordings or cloned voices can fool it. Don't let it unlock anything sensitive; keep tool-using agents on a restricted profile.

• The server listens on 127.0.0.1 only. Requests from other websites are rejected; set UTTERLANE_API_TOKEN before exposing it on a network. Details: SECURITY.md.

Configuration

Everything is optional; see .env.example. Common settings:

Limitations

• Two people talking at the same time can't be separated with one microphone; such turns may be marked unclear.

• Unknown voices that sound alike can be merged into one "Person N".

• Thresholds were calibrated on clean, consented recordings plus public FLEURS voices; a noisy room may need tuning (config.SpeakerThresholds).

• Turkish and English today. Pocket TTS also speaks German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch, but naming phrases are only implemented for Turkish and English.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Please report security problems privately (SECURITY.md).

License

Apache-2.0 © 2026 Tuncer Timur. Models are downloaded separately and keep their own licenses (MIT, CC-BY-4.0) — see NOTICE and docs/MODELS.md.