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# desktop-assistant
A local push-to-talk voice assistant. Unmute the microphone, speak, mute it:
the assistant transcribes what you said, asks a local LLM, and speaks the
answer. Italian and English. Nothing leaves the machine.
```
mic button ──> arecord ──> whisper-server (STT) ──> llama-server (LLM) ──> Kokoro (TTS) ──> aplay
```
## How it works
- **Push-to-talk** is the microphone's own mute button: the script listens to
the ALSA `Mic Capture Switch` (`amixer events`). Switch on starts a
recording, switch off ends it.
- **Speech to text**: whisper.cpp's `whisper-server` with the
`large-v3-turbo` model on the GPU (Vulkan). The script starts it if it is
not already running and stops it on exit.
- **LLM**: an OpenAI-compatible `llama-server` on `localhost:8181`. The
script uses whichever model the server already has loaded, so it never
swaps models under other clients.
- **Text to speech**: Kokoro-82M through `kokoro-onnx`, one voice per
language, chosen per sentence from the language of the reply. Speech
starts after the first sentence, while the rest is still being generated.
- **Calls**: while the desktop's presentation mode is on
(`statusctl presentation get` returns `1`), button presses are ignored, so
a call can use the microphone.
## Requirements
- whisper.cpp (`whisper-server`) and a whisper ggml model
- a running `llama-server` with an OpenAI-compatible API
- Python 3 with `onnxruntime`, `numpy` and `kokoro-onnx`
- `espeak-ng`, ALSA utils (`amixer`, `arecord`, `aplay`), `curl`
- a USB microphone with a hardware mute button exposed as an ALSA switch
Paths, the card name and ports are constants at the top of `assistant.py`.
## Usage
```sh
python3 -m venv --system-site-packages .venv
.venv/bin/pip install kokoro-onnx
.venv/bin/python assistant.py # run
.venv/bin/python assistant.py --test # self-check
```
## License
Copyright (C) 2026 Danilo M. <danix@danix.xyz>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by
the Free Software Foundation. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).
## Development Approach
This project is developed using AI-assisted tools. Code is generated with the help of AI based on human-provided specifications, design decisions, and iterative feedback.
All contributions are reviewed, tested, and curated by the maintainer before being included in the codebase. AI is used as a productivity and exploration tool, while human oversight remains central to all decisions.
The goal is to combine the flexibility of AI-assisted development with standard open-source practices such as transparency, review, and accountability.
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