Canonical direction: emotion set by twisting raw dials per-utterance, not preset
selection. Presets demoted to optional examples. Spec covers the dial vocabulary
+ ranges, the emotion_cfg_scale 'deaf by 1.5' rule (NO cap — documented ceiling,
explicit over implicit), measured RTF cost, starting-point dial-sets, an LLM
client system-prompt snippet, and clone reference guidance (~15-24s, no
transcript). Follow-ups flagged: align dials.py cfg help/metadata, trim in-code
PRESETS pending usage check, stand up vh/zonos-gateway for version control.
Captures the production Zonos TTS path that the repo was blind to: stock ZONOS2
:1920 engine (stacks/zonos-engine) fronted by zonos-gateway:0.2.0 :8890, reached
via the LiteLLM ext-tts alias. Documents the emotion-preset system (neutral/warm/
excited/sad/intense/whisper, the simple preset: caller path), the API, and the
measured real-time cost (calibrated steering free at RTF~0.52, cfg1.5 ~0.625 —
still realtime). Flags the gateway source (~/zonos-gateway on irv-ml1) as not yet
in gitea. Marks stacks/zonos (v0.1 Gradio) dead/superseded. Records the emotion-
lever finding (text-priming flat -> native steering works) in persistent memory.
vh