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esh-pfi-infrastructure/stacks/kokoro/README.md
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vh c5ab99e74f kokoro: persist custom voices across container recreate
Wrapper only enumerates one voice directory (settings.voices_dir,
default /app/api/src/voices/v1_0 — inside the container's writable
layer, not bind-mounted). Override via VOICES_DIR=/app/user_voices
(host bind mount) and add a command shim that cp -r's built-ins from
the in-image v1_0 into user_voices on every start. Built-ins re-seed
fresh from the image (so upgrades that add voices propagate); custom
.pt files in user_voices are preserved (cp -r is additive).

Also adds scripts/blend_kokoro_voice.py + a playbook around it that
mirrors the wrapper's request-time voice="a(w)+b(w)" math but writes
the result as a named .pt to user_voices, making it discoverable via
GET /v1/audio/voices and persistent across recreate. Defaults to
athena = af_bella(2)+af_aoede(1) normalized.
2026-05-10 17:48:24 -07:00

107 lines
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Markdown

# Kokoro
[hexgrad/Kokoro-82M](https://huggingface.co/hexgrad/Kokoro-82M) served
via [remsky/Kokoro-FastAPI](https://github.com/remsky/Kokoro-FastAPI).
## Why this stack exists
Lowest-latency English TTS in the fleet by a wide margin — ~300 ms
time-to-first-audio on GPU, 35-100x realtime, ~1 GB VRAM at fp16.
Native streaming (Kokoro's `KPipeline.__call__` is a per-phrase
generator) and the wrapper exposes it via OpenAI-compat `stream=true`
over chunked HTTP — drop-in for any OpenAI SDK client.
Complementary to the rest of the TTS slate:
| | use case |
|---|---|
| **Kokoro** | low-latency English, fixed voice library |
| **Chatterbox Turbo** | low-latency English w/ voice cloning + paralinguistic tags |
| **IndexTTS-2** | English voice cloning + emotion vector / text control |
| **Qwen3-TTS-1.7B-Base** | high-quality English voice cloning |
| **CosyVoice 3** | multilingual (Chinese-leaning) |
| **VibeVoice 1.5B** | long-form podcast / multi-speaker dialogue |
## API
OpenAI-compat at `http://10.100.79.3:8193`:
```bash
# List built-in voices (~60 of them, named like af_bella, am_adam, jf_*, zf_*).
curl http://10.100.79.3:8193/v1/audio/voices
# Single-shot synthesis.
curl -fsS -X POST http://10.100.79.3:8193/v1/audio/speech \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"model":"kokoro","input":"Hello there.","voice":"af_bella","response_format":"wav"}' \
> out.wav
# Streaming — pipe straight into a player.
curl -fsS -X POST http://10.100.79.3:8193/v1/audio/speech \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"model":"kokoro","input":"long passage here…","voice":"af_bella","stream":true}' \
| mpv --no-cache -
# Voice mixing — sum voicepacks with weights.
curl -fsS -X POST http://10.100.79.3:8193/v1/audio/speech \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"model":"kokoro","input":"hello","voice":"af_bella(2)+af_heart(1)","response_format":"wav"}' \
> mix.wav
```
Web UI at `/web` (browse voices + try in-place); OpenAPI at `/docs`.
Supported `response_format`: `mp3 | wav | opus | flac | pcm`.
## Voices
- **Built-in**: 60+ in 8 languages (en-US, en-GB, ja, zh, es, fr, hi, it).
Discoverable via `GET /v1/audio/voices` — naming convention is
`<lang_code><gender_letter>_<name>` (e.g. `af_bella`, `am_adam`,
`jf_alpha`, `zf_xiaobei`).
- **Custom blends**: weighted-average existing voicepacks into a new
named voice using `playbooks/blend-kokoro-voice.yaml` (script:
`scripts/blend_kokoro_voice.py`). Mirrors the wrapper's request-time
`voice="a(w)+b(w)"` math but persists the result so it shows up in
`/v1/audio/voices`. Example shipped: `athena = af_bella(2)+af_aoede(1)`
normalized.
```bash
scripts/elway irv-ml1 --playbook playbooks/blend-kokoro-voice.yaml \
--var 'recipe=af_bella(1)+am_adam(1)' --var out_name=androgyne
# add --var force=1 to overwrite an existing voice
```
Persistence design: the wrapper enumerates exactly one directory
(`VOICES_DIR`, default in-image `/app/api/src/voices/v1_0`).
compose.yaml overrides `VOICES_DIR=/app/user_voices` (host bind
mount `/worktank/kokoro/user_voices`) and adds a `command:` shim
that `cp -r`'s the in-image built-ins into that dir on every
container start. Result:
* built-in voicepacks re-seed on each start, so image upgrades that
add/change built-ins propagate automatically
* custom blends written by the script live on the host bind mount —
survive `docker restart`, `up --force-recreate`, image upgrade,
and host reboot
* one-time prereq: the host dir must be chowned to `1001:1001`
(uid of `appuser` inside the container) so the shim's cp can
write — handled by `playbooks/deploy-kokoro.yaml`
- **Cloned voices**: training a Kokoro voice from samples is non-
trivial — consult the hexgrad community for how-to. For voice
cloning use Chatterbox Turbo or IndexTTS-2 instead.
## Deploy
```bash
scripts/elway irv-ml1 --playbook playbooks/deploy-kokoro.yaml
```
First deploy: ~6.5 GB image pull from GHCR (~2-5 min on a fast link).
No model download on first run — Kokoro-82M weights are baked in.
Subsequent starts: a few seconds.
## License
Apache-2.0 for both the wrapper code (remsky/Kokoro-FastAPI) and the
Kokoro-82M weights (hexgrad).