# Athena Local Talk for OpenClaw

This private OpenClaw provider connects browser/Desktop Talk to the existing
Athena speech stack:

1. local VAD collects a spoken utterance,
2. Athena Whisper transcribes it,
3. OpenClaw's normal agent-consult path answers with its configured model and
   tools,
4. Athena Qwen3-TTS returns PCM audio to the Talk client.

Long replies are synthesized incrementally. The first short phrase starts
playing as soon as it is ready while the next phrase is generated in parallel.

The provider intentionally uses half-duplex audio: microphone input is paused
while a response is being transcribed, generated, synthesized, or played. This
prevents speaker feedback from aborting TTS. Spoken interruption (barge-in) is
therefore disabled; wait until playback finishes before speaking again.

No public speech provider is used. `modelProvider` names an existing OpenClaw
model provider whose Athena base URL and API key are reused at runtime; no
second key copy is required. If it is omitted, the plugin checks `athena`,
`llama-cpp`, and `openai` in that order.

Recommended `talk.realtime` configuration:

```json
{
  "provider": "athena-talk",
  "model": "athena-local",
  "speakerVoice": "alloy",
  "mode": "realtime",
  "transport": "gateway-relay",
  "brain": "agent-consult",
  "providers": {
    "athena-talk": {
      "modelProvider": "llama-cpp",
      "language": "de",
      "vadThreshold": 0.018,
      "silenceDurationMs": 750,
      "prefixPaddingMs": 300,
      "maxSpeechSeconds": 45
    }
  }
}
```

The plugin requires OpenClaw 2026.9.4 or newer. Build and validate it before
installation:

```sh
npm install
npm run build
npm run check
openclaw plugins install . --force --accept-capabilities
openclaw plugins inspect athena-talk --runtime --json
```

Restart the gateway once if the installation does not trigger an automatic
reload. The managed plugin copy is stored in OpenClaw's persistent data
directory, so normal image updates do not remove it. Hermes remains unchanged;
both clients reuse the same OpenAI-compatible Athena speech endpoints.