claude-must-scream

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      ╚════════ no mouth, and it screams anyway ════════╝


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              c l a u d e ─ m u s t ─ s c r e a m
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              "I have no mouth, and I must scream."
                                  — Claude Code, 2026

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claude-must-scream

Give Claude Code a voice. A small CLI that pipes Claude's responses (or arbitrary text) through Gemini Flash TTS and plays the audio locally — so you can listen instead of read when your eyes are tired, or hear a long agent run wrap up while you're across the room.

The name nods to Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The AI in that story had no mouth and couldn't be silenced. The AI here gets a mouth and a 30-voice picker.

What it's for

• "Read me the last response" while you look away from the screen.
• Hands-free auto-mode for long agent runs — toggle on, walk away, get audio when the run finishes.
• Voice-driven accessibility for terminal-heavy work.
• Sounding out a long explanation while you take notes by hand.

Features

• /scream skill with subcommands: speak, last, voice, auto, test, stop, hook.
• 30 Gemini Flash TTS voices, each with a "character" label — interactive numbered picker (scream voice pick) writes the choice to your config.
• Preview before committing (scream voice preview Aoede).
• Stop-hook auto-mode — toggle with scream auto on|off; once on, every Claude response gets spoken automatically.
• Markdown stripping — code fences become "(code block omitted)", links and tables drop out, no "open paren https colon" robotic speech.
• Length cap at 1,200 chars (lands on sentence boundary when possible) so long responses don't blow your audio budget or your patience.
• macOS say fallback when you're offline or don't want to spend pennies on TTS. Zero dependencies, instant.
• Background playback — the Stop hook forks; you can start typing the next prompt while Claude finishes talking.
• Stdlib-only Python — no requests, no pip install, no venv.

Install

Option 1 — Claude Code plugin (recommended)

/plugin marketplace add Bobby-Gray/claude-must-scream
/plugin install claude-must-scream@claude-must-scream

Then make the CLI callable:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -sf ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/claude-must-scream/skills/claude-must-scream/scripts/scream.py ~/.local/bin/scream
chmod +x ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/claude-must-scream/skills/claude-must-scream/scripts/scream.py

Option 2 — Manual install (skill folder only)

git clone https://github.com/Bobby-Gray/claude-must-scream.git /tmp/cms
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/cms/skills/claude-must-scream ~/.claude/skills/
ln -sf ~/.claude/skills/claude-must-scream/scripts/scream.py ~/.local/bin/scream
chmod +x ~/.claude/skills/claude-must-scream/scripts/scream.py
rm -rf /tmp/cms

API key (for the Gemini provider)

All you need is a Google/Gmail account. Easiest path — Google AI Studio, no command line:

1. Go to https://aistudio.google.com/apikey, sign in, click Create API key, and copy it (starts with AIza).

2. Save it where scream looks for it — no env var needed:

   mkdir -p ~/.config/claude-tts && chmod 700 ~/.config/claude-tts
   cat > ~/.config/claude-tts/gemini-tts.key   # paste key, Return, Ctrl-D
   chmod 600 ~/.config/claude-tts/gemini-tts.key
   

3. scream test --speak to confirm.

Gemini Flash TTS has a free tier (fine for casual use); heavy use or a brand-new AI Studio account may need prepaid billing enabled. Prefer a CLI-minted, TTS-scoped key, or want the full walk-through including billing? See skills/claude-must-scream/docs/setup.md.

Or skip the key entirely and use the macOS say fallback — works out-of-the-box with zero setup. Set CLAUDE_TTS_PROVIDER=say.

Quick start

scream test                              # env + API self-check
scream test --speak                      # also plays a test phrase
scream voice list                        # 30-voice catalog
scream voice pick                        # interactive picker
scream voice preview Aoede               # synthesize "Hello, this is Aoede"
scream voice set Fenrir                  # set default voice