kyutai-tts-mcp

Local-only voice for any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) via Kyutai Pocket TTS. No cloud, no API keys, no rate limits.

• 🇫🇷 French (Estelle), 🇬🇧 English (Alba), plus Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese
• TTFA ~80–200 ms thanks to native streaming via the pocket-tts Python API
• Multi-language at runtime — pass language= per speak() call, models load lazily and cache
• ~4-5× real-time generation on Apple Silicon / Intel CPU
• Non-blocking speak(), gap-free playback via sounddevice write-mode
• ~600 MB venv, ~1 GB model cache per language

Install

uvx kyutai-tts-mcp --help

Or persistent:

uv tool install kyutai-tts-mcp

Then add to your MCP client's .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kyutai-tts": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["kyutai-tts-mcp", "--language", "french_24l"]
    }
  }
}

Replace french_24l with english, spanish_24l, german_24l, italian_24l, or portuguese_24l for your default language. Per-call language= overrides this default.

MCP tools

Configuration

The default language is set via --language (CLI) or KYUTAI_TTS_LANGUAGE (env var). Other knobs (all env):

• KYUTAI_TTS_VOICE — default voice name
• KYUTAI_TTS_DEVICE — PyTorch device (default cpu; mps not supported)
• KYUTAI_TTS_QUANTIZE — set to 1 for int8 quantization
• KYUTAI_TTS_MAX_TOKENS — max tokens per streaming chunk (default 50)

Voice cloning

Pocket-tts can clone a voice from a short audio sample. The cloning runs 100 % locally — your audio never leaves the machine — but the cloning-enabled model checkpoint is gated on Hugging Face. One-time setup:

1. Accept the terms at huggingface.co/kyutai/pocket-tts
2. uv tool install huggingface-hub && hf auth login
3. rm -rf ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--kyutai--pocket-tts to force re-downloading the cloning-enabled checkpoint

Then either pass the audio file directly to speak(voice="/path/to.wav"), or pre-extract it as a .safetensors for instant loading:

uvx kyutai-tts-mcp extract-voice \
  --audio ~/voices/yours.wav \
  --out ~/voices/yours.safetensors \
  --language french_24l \
  --truncate

Then speak(voice="/path/to/yours.safetensors"). Full guide and recording recommendations: main repo.

Claude Code users

If you're on Claude Code (CLI, desktop, or via Cursor), you can install the bundled plugin (MCP wiring + /voice-mode skill) in one shot:

/plugin marketplace add Vincweb/kyutai-tts-mcp
/plugin install kyutai-tts@vincweb-tools

See the main repo for architecture details, voice catalog, and a side-by-side comparison with voxtral-mcp.

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon recommended; Intel works — the model is CPU-only)
• Python 3.10 – 3.13
• ~1 GB free RAM per loaded language

License

MIT. Kyutai pocket-tts itself is under its own permissive licence (see upstream).