Remote headless backends have no PortAudio mic, so "hey hermes" fails even
when openWakeWord is installed. Let the desktop stream 16 kHz int16 PCM via
wake.feed while detection stays server-side.
- wake_word.capture: auto|local|client (+ GUI client_capture prefer)
- WakeWordDetector external_audio queue + feed_audio API
- wake.feed RPC; wake.start/status report capture + frame_length
- Desktop getUserMedia feeder; stop on wake.detected, re-arm after voice
- Docs + unit tests (26 pass in tests/tools/test_wake_word.py)
Saying 'stop' in a voice chat did nothing — the transcript was just
submitted to the agent as a normal turn, so the conversation never ended.
The only way out was the mouse/hotkey. That's not how a hands-free voice
assistant should work.
useVoiceConversation now checks each finished utterance against a spoken
stop-command matcher BEFORE submitting: 'stop', 'stop listening', 'never
mind', 'goodbye', 'cancel', 'that's all', etc., optionally addressed
('hey hermes, stop'). A match ends the conversation (flips enabled=false,
which drives the existing end() teardown — mic close, playback stop, wake
re-arm) instead of sending a turn.
Deliberately conservative: only a WHOLE-utterance stop phrase matches, so
substantive requests that merely contain 'stop' ('stop the docker
container', 'how do I stop a process') still go through.
- apps/desktop/src/lib/voice-stop-word.ts: isVoiceStopCommand() matcher
- use-voice-conversation.ts: onStopWord option + intercept before submit
- use-composer-voice.ts: wire onStopWord -> end the conversation
- 6 matcher tests (bare/multi-word/addressed stop; substantive requests
with 'stop' pass through; bare address words don't match)
- docs: note the spoken-stop behavior
'hey hor' triggered the wake word: the default sensitivity was 0.5, which
for openWakeWord IS the raw per-frame score threshold — openWakeWord's own
permissive baseline that near-misses clear. Raised the default to 0.6 so
phonetic near-misses fall short while real 'hey hermes' (typically 0.9+)
still fires easily.
Also fixed a real cross-engine inconsistency found while checking: the
sensitivity knob is documented 'higher = stricter' and behaves that way
for openWakeWord (threshold = sensitivity) and sherpa (0.05 + 0.4*s), but
Porcupine's own 'sensitivities' param runs the opposite way (higher = MORE
false alarms, per Picovoice). Turning sensitivity up made Porcupine looser
— backwards. Now inverted (1 - sensitivity) so 'higher = stricter' holds
for every engine.
- tools/wake_word.py: default 0.6; _sensitivity fallback uses _DEFAULTS;
Porcupine sensitivity inverted with rationale
- hermes_cli/config.py + docs: default + consistent-direction note
- tests: Porcupine inversion, default>=0.6 regression, fallback-to-default
openWakeWord scores one ~80ms frame at a time and the detector fired the
instant a SINGLE frame crossed threshold — so a stray phoneme in background
conversation could trigger the wake word unintentionally (reported in
testing). A real utterance of the phrase holds a high score across several
consecutive frames; an ambient blip spikes just one.
_OpenWakeWordEngine now requires N consecutive over-threshold frames
(wake_word.confirmation_frames, default 3) before firing. The streak resets
on any sub-threshold frame and on engine reset() (pause/resume), so a
pre-pause frame can't count toward a post-resume fire. confirmation_frames=1
restores the old single-frame behavior; clamped 1..10.
Only openWakeWord is affected — sherpa (streaming transducer) and porcupine
decode the whole phrase internally and already reject single-frame spikes.
- tools/wake_word.py: _confirmation_frames() accessor, streak logic in
process()/reset(), config default
- hermes_cli/config.py: wake_word.confirmation_frames documented default
- tests: 5 new (spike rejected, sustained fires once, =1 legacy behavior,
reset clears streak, config clamp) — 58 wake tests green
- docs: 'Reducing false triggers on ambient speech' section
openWakeWord's ONNX backend returns near-zero scores on Apple Silicon
(dscripka/openWakeWord#336), so "Hey Hermes" never crossed the 0.5
threshold: the listener armed, the microphone worked, and nothing fired.
Bisecting the pipeline puts the fault in exactly one stage — feeding the
same audio through both backends, the melspectrogram front-end is
bit-identical (maxdiff 0.00000) and the wake classifier agrees on
identical features, while the shared embedding model diverges by 45.44.
Cross-feeding confirms it: tflite features scored through the *onnx*
classifier give 0.9948 vs 0.000009 for onnx features. A telling
secondary symptom is that scores fall as input gets louder (0.5x ->
0.00031, 8x -> 0.000066), which is garbage inference rather than a weak
detection.
Selecting tflite in config alone does not fix it. openWakeWord hardcodes
`import tflite_runtime.interpreter` but declares tflite-runtime for
`platform_system == "Linux"` only; on macOS the equivalent wheel is
ai-edge-litert, so that import always fails and model.py silently
downgrades back to onnx. The result is a detector that reports itself
listening and can never fire.
- default the backend per platform (tflite on macOS ARM64, onnx
elsewhere) instead of hardcoding onnx, and pick the matching bundled
model artifact
- bridge tflite_runtime -> ai_edge_litert through sys.modules, in-process,
with no writes to site-packages
- refuse the silent onnx downgrade on macOS ARM64 and report the missing
runtime through check_wake_word_requirements() so the GUI surfaces an
actionable hint rather than arming a dead ear
- lazy-install ai-edge-litert via its own feature key, because lazy-dep
specs cannot carry PEP 508 markers (_spec_is_safe rejects ";")
An explicit `inference_framework` in config still wins, so anyone pinning
a backend keeps it.
Verified on macOS 26.5.2 / M-series: "hey hermes" scores 0.0005 on onnx
and 0.9423 on tflite from the same clip, with cross-phrase controls at
0.0003. Live over-the-air through the real microphone fires 4/4
utterances (peak 0.9532).
Two fixes from live testing (Teknium):
1. Desktop installs now ship the wake/voice stacks up front.
install.sh + install.ps1 desktop stages run 'uv pip install
-e .[wake,voice]' (best-effort, lazy-install remains the fallback)
before building the app, so the first ear-click arms instantly
instead of sitting through a multi-minute onnxruntime download.
CLI-only installs keep the lazy path — [all] curation unchanged.
2. The vanished ear: the STT/TTS gate made wake.status call
check_tts_requirements(), whose edge path runs _import_edge_tts →
lazy_deps.ensure — a synchronous PIP INSTALL inside a status poll.
On a venv without edge-tts that blew the desktop's 30s RPC timeout,
armWakeWord caught the error, the atom never learned enabled=true,
and the ear unmounted. _tts_ready is now a pure probe: deps missing
+ lazy installs allowed counts as ready (installs at first speak)
WITHOUT touching pip; check_tts_requirements only runs once deps
are present. Regression test asserts the probe never calls it while
deps are missing.
The wake loop is wake → record → STT → agent → TTS. Arming without
either end configured gives a mic that hears you and then does nothing
perceivable — a useless experience. check_wake_word_requirements now
probes both (same probes /voice uses: stt.enabled + provider != none;
check_tts_requirements) and refuses with a pointer to `hermes tools`
naming exactly which half is missing. The desktop ear hides (available:
false already hides the button), /wake on prints the hint on CLI/TUI.
wake.start also validates requirements BEFORE persisting
wake_word.enabled, so a refused gesture can't leave config claiming on
while nothing can ever arm.
Tests: per-half and both-missing hint assertions; existing requirements
tests pinned via _voice_loop_ready so they don't depend on the test
venv's installed voice stack. E2E: stt.enabled=false in a real config
-> unavailable with the speech-to-text hint.
Internal testing (macOS): clicking the ear froze the button for ~30s,
then it went blue but 'hey hermes' never fired even though STT worked.
Two distinct bugs:
1. Frozen-then-timeout button: first-use wake.start lazy-installs the
detection engine (onnxruntime is a large wheel), which blows the
desktop's default 30s WS request timeout — the RPC 'failed' client-
side while the backend kept installing and armed later on its own.
wake.start now gets a 180s budget and the pending state says
'arming — first use may take a minute while the engine installs'
instead of a silent disabled button.
2. Armed but deaf: macOS grants mic permission per PROCESS. The
renderer having mic access (STT working) does not grant the Python
backend anything — CoreAudio hands an unentitled process a 'working'
stream that delivers zeros forever, so the listener looks healthy
and can never hear the phrase. The detector now tracks frame peaks:
10s of consecutive near-zero frames sets audio_silent, logged with
the exact macOS Settings path, cleared automatically when audio
appears. Surfaced everywhere: wake.status (audio_silent + hint),
desktop ear tooltip (kept visible while listening), /wake status on
TUI (⚠ line) and classic CLI, plus a docs troubleshooting section.
Tests: detector silent-flag set/recover cycle (fake silent/loud
streams), desktop tooltip keeps the dead-mic hint while listening.
44 wake Python tests, 22 desktop + 14 TUI vitest green.
Clicking the desktop ear button or running /wake on|off now writes
wake_word.enabled to config.yaml (live, saved for future sessions), so the
feature no longer requires hand-editing config before the UI toggle works.
- wake.start accepts persist:true (explicit gesture): flips
wake_word.enabled on in config before arming; response reports
enabled_persisted. Passive auto-arm paths (desktop gateway-ready,
TUI reconnect) never pass it, so a mic can't become persistently
enabled without a deliberate user action.
- wake.stop accepts persist:true: writes wake_word.enabled: false so
auto-arm stays off next session; reports disabled_persisted.
- Split the refusal reason: 'disabled' (feature off in config — a
persisted gesture turns it on) vs 'disabled_for_surface' (explicit
wake_word.surface scoping, which persist does NOT override).
- Classic CLI /wake on|off and bare-toggle persist the flag too
(skips the write when config already matches).
- Desktop tooltip now maps refusal codes to friendly text (mirrors
the TUI's START_REASON_TEXT) instead of showing raw codes like
disabled_for_surface.
- Docs: quick-start notes the toggle persists; ear-button mention.
One sherpa listener now enrolls every wake-enabled profile's phrase
(defaulting to "hey <profile name>") and reports WHICH phrase fired.
wake.detected gains a profile field; the desktop live-switches to the
matching profile (same path as the profile rail), opens a fresh session
there, and starts hands-free voice. The single-profile CLI/TUI print the
hermes -p switch command for foreign-profile phrases instead of
answering as the wrong profile. Opt out per listener with
wake_word.profile_routing: false.
New "sherpa" wake_word provider: the configured phrase is BPE-tokenized
at runtime against a small streaming zipformer KWS model (~13 MB English,
one-time download cached under HERMES_HOME), so ANY typed phrase works
with zero training — including per-profile phrases like "hey coder".
wake.sherpa lazy-dep group + [wake] extra grow sherpa-onnx/sentencepiece;
requirements probe routes per provider; sensitivity maps onto sherpa
keywords_threshold. E2E-verified on real audio (target phrase fires,
foreign phrase stays silent, reset drops buffered state).
From #53378: ships hey_hermes.onnx/.tflite (openWakeWord pipeline,
Apache-2.0) under tools/wakewords/, resolves the default (and hey_hermes
aliases) to the bundled file, ensures openWakeWord base feature models
are fetched for custom paths too, and updates config defaults + docs
from hey_jarvis to hey hermes.
Regenerate uv.lock for the [wake] extra (openwakeword, pvporcupine,
onnxruntime) so uv lock --check passes. Replace angle-bracket URLs in
wake-word.md with markdown links — MDX treats <https://...> as JSX.
Makes the wake word a tri-surface feature with one configurable owner.
- wake_word.surface ("auto" | "cli" | "tui" | "gui") + shared
wake_surface_enabled() gate consulted by every surface, so exactly one
place owns the listener and the new session it opens.
- tui_gateway: wake.start/stop/pause/resume/status RPCs + a wake.detected
event, sharing one server-side detector for both TUI and desktop. The
detector yields the mic to voice.record (pause on capture start, resume
on terminal) and to the desktop's browser mic (wake.pause/resume).
- TUI (Ink): arm wake.start on gateway.ready; on wake.detected open a
fresh session and start voice capture.
- Desktop (Electron): arm wake.start on connect; on wake.detected open a
fresh session.
- CLI now gates on wake_surface_enabled("cli"); /wake status shows surface.
- Tests for the surface gate; docs cover the surface knob + cross-surface.
Adds an opt-in, on-device hotword listener for the CLI. With
wake_word.enabled (or /wake on), Hermes listens in the background for a
wake phrase; on detection it starts a fresh session, captures one
utterance through the existing voice pipeline, and answers — the
"Hey Siri" pattern.
- tools/wake_word.py: provider-pluggable detector (openWakeWord, free
local default; Porcupine, premium) over the shared 16 kHz sounddevice
capture path. Background daemon thread with pause/resume so it yields
the mic during a voice turn.
- CLI wiring: startup listener (off-thread), on-wake flow, an idle
watchdog that resumes the detector after each turn, cleanup hook, and
a /wake [on|off|status] command.
- config.yaml wake_word section; PORCUPINE_ACCESS_KEY as an optional
secret. Engines lazy-install via the [wake] extra.
- Hands a transcript to the input queue exactly like voice mode, so no
system-prompt/cache mutation. No new core model tool.
- Tests (mocked, no live audio/network) + feature docs.
Andrew
Gille
Teknium
Ben Barclay
Brooklyn Nicholson
Omid Saadat