Sub-second streaming TTS on Chatterbox-Turbo via adaptive buffer-ratchet
chunking. First audio in ~0.5s (vs ~5s one-shot) with no quality compromise —
chunk joins land on natural sentence pauses and the stream converges to one
large near-full-context chunk within 2-3 joins. Works because the engine runs
faster than realtime; the no-starvation guarantee is proven in a GPU-free
simulation (tests/test_scheduler.py).
- chatterbox_fast/scheduler.py: the adaptive-chunk scheduler (pure logic, no GPU)
- chatterbox_fast/app.py: FastAPI server (POST /tts streaming, /voices, /health)
- bench.py: streaming client (ground-truth TTFB + starvation check)
- Self-contained Dockerfile (slim base + chatterbox-tts from PyPI)
- Three public-domain LibriVox starter voices baked in (see voices/ATTRIBUTION.md)
MIT licensed.