chatter - your personal AI voice assistant

aka project-chatter!

table of contents

for the main stuff:

• how to install chatter
• troubleshooting errors
• usage
• customization
• privacy

what is chatter?

chatter is AI voice assistant made purely in python, from the UI, to the voice recognition, all made in python! chatter uses the hackclub ai for responses! chatter uses local models for the tts and speech!

how to install chatter?

there are 2 ways to install chatter, as a python package, or from source!

install chatter from pypi - reccomended

[!NOTE] Chatter doesnt work on windows, due to piper packages not supporting it. this only works for macOS and linux

make sure you have onxruntime installed -

pip install onnxruntime

after thats installed, you can go ahead and install project-chatter!

pip install project-chatter

and after that also make sure to run

pip install "project-chatter[voice]"

after that to start it just run

chatter-start

also make sure to enable microphone privelleges for the terminal you run it in.

how to install chatter from source

install uv

[!NOTE] again, project-chatter currently doesnt work on windows, due to piper-phoenimze packages not supporting it.

linux (all distros) & macOS

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

install Python 3.12 using uv

uv python install 3.12

this downloads and manages Python 3.12 locally for your projects.

clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/divpreeet/project-chatter.git
cd project-chatter

create a virtual environment with Python 3.12

uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate

install system dependencies

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential portaudio19-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libfreetype6-dev python3-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install -y gcc python3-devel portaudio-devel SDL2-devel SDL2_image-devel SDL2_mixer-devel SDL2_ttf-devel freetype-devel libffi-devel libsndfile-devel

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -Syu --needed python portaudio sdl2 sdl2_image sdl2_mixer sdl2_ttf freetype2 libffi libsndfile

install Python dependencies

uv pip install -r requirements.txt

run Chatter!

python main/chatter.py

note:

• On macOS, run from the default Terminal and allow Microphone access when prompted.
• On Linux, if you have audio permission issues, ensure your user is in the audio group.
• If you see errors about piper-phonemize, make sure your requirements.txt uses piper-phonemize-cross as described in troubleshooting.

---

usage

it's simple! just say 'chatter' along your message and chatter would respond! extra stuff:

• you can also just say chatter, without saying your message, that would make chatter say 'Yes?' after which you could continue asking your message
• saying stuff like 'chatter goodbye' or anything from bye, goodbye, exit, quit, along with 'chatter' simply exits the appication
• try saying 'chatter what are you up to' for a surprise
• if your hacky and want ultimate customization, just open up the main.py and adjust the stuff that you'd want! like the wake words, end words and so on! i hope the code is readable 😭

customization

you can also customize the look and feel for chatter!

looks

just open the config file and mess with it however you want! its in simple rgb colors, and you can change everything you see!

here are some templates! to use them just copy paste the code into the file!

{
  "theme": "default",
  "bg_color": [23, 23, 23],
  "eye_color": [217, 217, 217],
  "tip_color": [180, 180, 180],
  "fonts": {
    "caption": "Inter.ttf",
    "caption_size": 28,
    "tip_size": 18
  },
  "tip_interval": 20
}

{
  "theme": "latte",
  "bg_color": [239, 241, 245],
  "eye_color": [76, 79, 105],
  "tip_color": [108, 111, 133],
  "fonts": {
    "caption": "Inter.ttf",
    "caption_size": 28,
    "tip_size": 18
  },
  "tip_interval": 20
}

{
  "theme": "frappe",
  "bg_color": [35, 38, 52],
  "eye_color": [115, 121, 148],
  "tip_color": [165, 173, 203],
  "fonts": {
    "caption": "Inter.ttf",
    "caption_size": 28,
    "tip_size": 18
  },
  "tip_interval": 20
}

{
  "theme": "macchiato",
  "bg_color": [36, 39, 58],
  "eye_color": [110, 115, 141],
  "tip_color": [184, 192, 224],
  "fonts": {
    "caption": "Inter.ttf",
    "caption_size": 28,
    "tip_size": 18
  },
  "tip_interval": 20
}

{
  "theme": "mocha",  
  "bg_color": [30, 30, 46],
  "eye_color": [152, 139, 162],
  "tip_color": [166, 173, 200],
  "fonts": {
    "caption": "Inter.ttf",
    "caption_size": 28,
    "tip_size": 18
  },
  "tip_interval": 20
}

these are just some templates, feel free to add on!

wake + end words

you can customize the wake and end words too! instead of chatter you could make it bob, simply open the main.py and change the WAKE_WORDS and END_WORDS to whatever you want

from:

WAKE_WORDS = ["chatter", "charter", "chadar", "chadda"]
END_WORDS = ["bye", "goodbye", "exit", "quit"]

to:

WAKE_WORDS = ["bob", "bop"]
END_WORDS = ["quiet", "shut up"]

troubleshooting

• Ensure your microphone is connected and set as the default input device.
• If you encounter errors related to audio or microphone access, make sure PortAudio is installed and all Python dependencies are satisfied.
• also sometimes chatter might not hear you, due to ambient noise or your microphone!
• also make sure you first cd main or the equivalent for windows before running chatter.py
• double-check you installed all system dependencies for your OS.
• use the recommended Python version (3.12), and use uv for faster, more reliable installs.
• still have an issue? copy the error and open an issue.

privacy

chatter doesnt store any data, not from your voice or computer, it simply just puts together multiple python libraries and has a nice UI, no shady stuff under the hood!

extra project screenshots