# Voice pipeline

Voice is input/output around the harness. The daemon owns capture, wake-word
processing, VAD, transcription, completion, TTS playback, barge-in policy, and
metrics.

```mermaid
flowchart LR
  MIC[PipeWire mic\n16 kHz mono] --> R[Wake ring buffer]
  R --> W[Wake engine]
  W -->|phrase| V[VAD + QVAC ASR]
  V -->|final utterance| H[Harness bridge]
  H -->|streamed reply| T[Sentence buffer]
  T --> Q[QVAC TTS]
  Q --> OUT[PipeWire playback]
  OUT -. anti-feedback gate .-> V
```

## State machine

```mermaid
stateDiagram-v2
  ARMED --> LISTENING: wake phrase / hotkey
  LISTENING --> THINKING: VAD final utterance
  THINKING --> SPEAKING: first reply audio
  THINKING --> LISTENING: tool work / no audio yet
  SPEAKING --> LISTENING: playback + cooldown
  LISTENING --> ARMED: silence timeout
  SPEAKING --> ARMED: cancel / Escape
  ARMED --> SLEEPING: idle timeout
  SLEEPING --> LISTENING: wake phrase
```

The wake stage is intentionally separate from QVAC ASR. Configure a local
openWakeWord or sherpa-onnx bridge through `JARVIS_WAKE_COMMAND`; no cloud wake
service is supported. During TTS, capture submission is gated and a 300–500 ms
cooldown prevents playback from becoming a new utterance. Trash transcripts and
very short fragments are discarded.

## Diagnostics and acceptance

Run `npm run voice-doctor`, then follow [voice acceptance](voice-acceptance.md).
The daemon metrics cover wake accepts/rejects, feedback drops, utterances, and
replies. Raw audio is not persisted by default.