Sound Like

"How does a cow sound?" A hybrid offline/online sound-lookup skill for OVOS - not an animal-sounds skill specifically, even though the bundled library happens to be animals today. See "Why not just 'animal sounds'" below.

Early 0.0.x release. 10 bundled animal sounds, en-us + da-dk. Not on the OVOS Skill Store yet.

Usage

"how does a cow sound"
"what does a dog sound like"
"play a cat sound"
"hvordan lyder en ko"          (Danish)
"hvilken lyd laver en hund"    (Danish)

If the sound isn't bundled and an online fallback is configured:

"how does big ben sound"
"what does a steam boat sound like"

Why not just "animal sounds"?

The first design for this skill was animal-specific, sourced entirely from a fixed, curated, offline sound library. But the person requesting it also wanted "how does Big Ben sound" and "what does a boiling egg sound like" to work - genuinely open-ended queries that no fixed offline list can cover.

Those are two different problems with different tradeoffs:

• A fixed bundled list is instant, offline, and fully quality- controlled (every sound was picked and verified by hand).
• An open "search the internet for a sound of X" is unbounded but depends on a network connection, an API key, and someone else's (uncurated) upload.

Rather than pick one, this skill does both: bundled sounds always answer instantly offline; anything else optionally falls back to an online search. The skill's identity had to change to match - it was never really "the animal sounds skill", it's "the how-does-that-sound skill", and animals just happen to be the first (and so far only) bundled category.

Architecture

1. Bundled, offline, curated. sounds/<category>/*.mp3, aliased per language in locale/<lang>/sound_aliases.json (same category- grouped JSON pattern as ovos-skill-convert's unit_aliases.json). No internet, no API key, instant playback. Only "animals" (10 sounds) exists today - adding a new bundled category is a locale- file + sounds-folder change, no code.
2. Online fallback via freesound.org, only for words NOT in the bundled table. Requires a free freesound.org API key (see settingsmeta.json / Settings). Results are filtered to CC0 (public domain) license only - never anything requiring attribution, since a spoken response has no good way to credit a source.

Unlike ovos-skill-convert's unit resolver, there is no fuzzy matching on the bundled table - a near-miss animal name falls through to the (clearly-announced) online fallback rather than risking a confidently wrong sound. A wrong unit conversion is a number being slightly off; a wrong animal sound is jarring and obviously wrong in a completely different way, so the bar for guessing is higher here.

What happens when

Install

pip install ovos-skill-sound-like

Getting a freesound.org API key (optional)

The bundled sounds work with zero configuration. For the online fallback:

1. Create a free account at freesound.org.
2. Apply for an API key at freesound.org/apiv2/apply.
3. Paste it into this skill's settings (freesound_api_key).

Sound credits

See CREDITS.md - all bundled sounds are CC0 (public domain) from bigsoundbank.com.

Development

See DEVELOPMENT.md.

Category

Entertainment

Tags

#sounds #animals #fun #kids #entertainment