dropoutsanta

Orca Read Aloud — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

Orca plugin that speaks a short summary when an agent finishes.

How to install Orca Read Aloud

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open dropoutsanta/orca-read-aloud and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Orca Read Aloud does

Orca plugin that speaks a short summary when an agent finishes. Local Mac voice, Claude writes the words, quiet while your mic is on.

Alternatives in Development

Stop Review Gate — You are reviewing uncommitted changes before the author finishes their turn 664 ★
06 Redesign Quiet Room — Redesign Inkwell around one idea: the app is a quiet room where writing happens 143 ★
Eli5 — Say the last answer again in plain words — same facts, in the order the operator needs them 49 ★

README

Read Aloud

An [Orca](https://github.com/stablyai/orca) plugin that talks when an agent finishes a turn.

You keep working. When the turn ends, Claude writes two to four sentences worth hearing, and the Mac voice reads them. Fenced code is left out. If the microphone is on, including an unmuted call, it stays quiet and does not catch up later.

The voice is local. `say` uses whatever voice you picked in System Settings, Spoken Content. The words come from the `claude` command already logged in on your Mac, on your Claude subscription. No API key is pulled out of the environment. If Claude fails or takes more than 25 seconds, the Mac voice reads a plain extract of the reply instead.

It follows Grok, Claude Code, and Codex by reading their transcript files on disk.

Install

Orca 1.4 or newer, on a Mac. You also need the `claude` CLI, logged in.

git clone https://github.com/dropoutsanta/orca-read-aloud.git
cd orca-read-aloud
./build.sh

In Orca, open Settings, then Plugins. Turn the plugin system on. Under Development, add the folder you just cloned. When Orca asks you to review it, click Enable plugin.

A window opens at http://127.0.0.1:47321. That is the live board. Orca's sidebar cannot receive updates from a plugin while it runs, so on/off, mute, and "this chat is working" live in that window.

The board

Each chat shows two things. The model column is Orca's status: working, waiting, blocked, or finished. Working covers the whole turn, including while the model is thinking. The speech column says whether Read Aloud will speak when the turn ends, is writing the summary, is speaking, is muted, or stayed quiet because the mic was on.

Mute is per chat. Off stops every chat. Stop cuts the current voice immediately.

Option-Command-X also stops it, including while a terminal has focus. Orca does not deliver plugin shortcuts into a terminal, so `stop-hotkey` registers that chord with macOS.