Desktop "Read replies aloud" / voice conversation, TUI and CLI /voice tts
now hold a lease on the TTS engine. Acquiring pre-loads the configured
provider (piper/kittentts model into the same LRU slot synthesis reads;
lazily-installed cloud SDKs), so the first spoken reply no longer pays the
model load as dead air. Releasing the last lease across surfaces unloads
resident local models.
- tools/tts_tool.py: warm_tts_provider / release_tts_provider /
acquire_tts_lease / release_tts_lease over a _LOCAL_TTS_MODEL_CACHES
registry; piper/kittentts loaders extracted so warm-up and synthesis
share one resolution path.
- web_server: POST /api/audio/tts-lease (profile-scoped, off-loop,
failures reported in body never as HTTP errors).
- tui_gateway voice.toggle + cli.py /voice tts|on|off wire the lease.
- desktop: lib/tts-lease.ts (dedupe, per-lease serialization, latest
intent wins) driven from useComposerVoice; setTtsLease API client.
- docs: features/tts.md section.
Live (real piper, isolated HERMES_HOME): first synthesis 988ms cold →
92ms after the toggle warmed the engine; release drops the model.
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