STAGE 3

The Voice Line

Now for the part that makes this feel alive: an actual voice. This stage uses Backtalk, a proven open-source project that gives Claude Code a real voice interface — hold a key, talk, and it answers back out loud through your speakers. Rather than hand-building speech recognition and text-to-speech from scratch, we're standing on working code and letting Claude itself run the setup.

Throughout each stage, read each step in its entirety before executing anything in that step, so you have a better understanding of what is to come and can be more prepared for what is about to happen.

STEP 1

Start Fresh

Before cloning anything, start this stage in a clean PowerShell window. If you have any other PowerShell, command prompt, or Claude Code windows open right now, close them first — even if that means ending a running Claude Code session.

Close any open PowerShell, command prompt, or Claude Code windows.
Click the Start menu (or press the Windows key), type PowerShell, and press Enter to open a fresh window (a regular, non-administrator window is fine here).

STEP 2

Clone the Repo

Get to your jarvis folder and pull down the Backtalk project.

cd $HOME
cd jarvis
git clone https://github.com/wcrowe2/backtalk

STEP 3

Open It in Claude Code

Move into the folder that was just created, and launch Claude there.

cd backtalk
claude

STEP 4

Run the Setup Wizard

You'll need an active Claude Pro subscription (or higher) for this — no separate API key required. If you already set this up back in Machine Setup, you're covered.

Backtalk's own setup runs through Claude itself rather than a script — Claude reads its instructions and walks through the install on your machine directly. In the chat you just opened, paste this in as your message:

read backtalk.md and set me up

From here, Claude installs the package manager it needs, sets up the speech-recognition and text-to-speech pieces, and downloads about a gigabyte of local voice models. This can take a few minutes — answer any questions it asks you along the way, and if it hits a snag on your specific machine, it can troubleshoot that live rather than you having to debug it yourself.

Tip: when the setup wizard asks you to pick a push-to-talk key, consider Right Alt instead of Right Control — some laptop keyboards don't have a dedicated Right Control key.

Near the end, the wizard launches the voice line itself and walks you through testing it live, right there in the same chat — hold the talk key, say something, hear it reply, all before setup is even done. It'll also show you the manual launch command for next time. There's nothing separate to launch afterward — once you've heard it reply and the wizard wraps up, press Ctrl+C to stop it, then move on to Step 5.

STEP 5

Set Your Voice Line Preferences

Backtalk has its own settings for things like which model it talks to and how it behaves day to day. Rather than dig through config files by hand, let your assistant do it.

After completing this step, you'll be able to launch your voice line anytime in Claude by just saying "run voice" or "run voice line."

You should already be in Claude Code at this point, still sitting inside your backtalk folder from Step 4. If so, paste this prompt in directly:

Before changing anything, interview me first, one question at a
time:

1. Do you want quick, fast responses by default, or deeper, more
   careful reasoning, even if it's a bit slower?
2. When you're about to do something significant — like running a
   command or changing a setting — do you want me to just do it, or
   check with you first?
3. Is there anything about how you want to be notified or confirmed
   with while using the voice line day to day?

Once I've answered, look at backtalk.json and any other config
Backtalk actually exposes, and wire my answers into whatever settings
genuinely map to them. If something I asked for doesn't have a real
setting to back it up, tell me plainly rather than pretending it's
been handled.

Also, from now on, whenever I say "run voice" or "run voice line,"
launch Backtalk by running "uv run python -m backtalk.main" from the
backtalk folder. Save this as a standing instruction in CLAUDE.md so
every future session remembers it, not just this one.

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Special Thanks

Built With: The voice interface in this stage is powered by Backtalk, an open-source project created by Jared. Full credit to him for the underlying work — check out the real repo here: github.com/jaredrhod/backtalk.