RuVox

Русская версия

A desktop application for narrating technical Russian-language texts.

Normalizes English terms, abbreviations, code, numbers, and URLs, then pipes the result into one of three TTS engines: Silero TTS v5 in-process on ONNX Runtime (the silero-native crate, default; model bundle downloaded on demand), Piper (in-process via piper-rs, zero-dependency fallback), or, optionally, Silero TTS out-of-process via the ttsd Python sidecar (kept as a fallback). Unlike a bare TTS, RuVox knows how to read getUserData() as «гет юзер дата», API as «эй пи ай», and /api/v2/users as a path rather than letter by letter.

All synthesis runs locally on your machine — no cloud TTS, nothing is sent anywhere. The network is used only to download voice models on demand, once per voice.

Stack

Layer	Technology
Shell	Tauri 2 (Rust + native webview)
Frontend	React 18 + TypeScript 5 + Mantine 8
Backend	Rust (normalization pipeline, storage, TTS manager)
TTS	Silero v5 native (in-process, ONNX Runtime, silero-native crate, default); Piper (in-process, piper-rs + onnxruntime, fallback); Silero via ttsd (optional Python 3.12 subprocess, fallback)
Audio	tauri-plugin-mpv (libmpv with scaletempo2)

Features

• Normalization — English (camelCase / snake_case), abbreviations, numbers, dates, URLs, email, code.
• Markdown + HTML — rendered and narrated while preserving meaning.
• Mermaid diagrams — visualized in the UI; replaced with a «тут мермэйд диаграмма» marker for TTS.
• Word highlight — synchronous highlighting of the currently narrated word during playback.
• Preview dialog — preview the normalized text before synthesis.
• System tray — close-to-tray, background mode.

Requirements

• OS: Linux (X11 or Wayland).
• Nix: recommended — the entire toolchain (Rust, Node, Python, Tauri deps) is built from flake.nix (dev shell lives in nix/devshell.nix).
• Without Nix: Linux distribution that ships webkit2gtk-4.1 (Ubuntu 24.04+, Debian 13+, Fedora 40+, Arch). Detailed step-by-step build guide: docs/install.md. Python 3.12 + uv are only required for the Python Silero engine (the ttsd sidecar) — Piper and the native Silero engine need neither.

Dev environment

# Interactive shell
nix develop
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

# Or run a single command without entering the shell
nix develop -c pnpm install
nix develop -c pnpm tauri dev

All commands in the docs assume execution inside nix develop (or via nix develop -c ...).

Production build

# Default (slim) — Piper + native Silero, no Python/torch in the closure.
nix build .#ruvox
./result/bin/ruvox

# Opt-in (full) — additionally bundles the ttsd sidecar, so the Python
# Silero engine is also available.
nix build .#ruvox-with-silero
./result/bin/ruvox

Both variants build the Tauri release binary and wrap it via wrapProgram (runtime LD_LIBRARY_PATH + GIO_EXTRA_MODULES) with mpv in PATH. .#ruvox-with-silero additionally puts the ttsd (Silero Python subprocess) binary in PATH; .#ruvox does not, and the Settings dialog greys the Python Silero engine out at runtime. The native Silero engine works in both variants — its ~230 MB ONNX model bundle is downloaded on demand from Settings.

First nix build run: the frontend derivation uses pnpm.fetchDeps with lib.fakeHash — Nix will fail with a hash mismatch and print the real hash; substitute it into flake.nix and re-run the build. This is the standard pnpm2nix procedure.

Tests

pnpm typecheck                                                  # TypeScript
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml                 # Rust (incl. pipeline golden tests)
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml --test golden   # golden tests only
cargo test --manifest-path silero-native/Cargo.toml             # native Silero engine (bundle-gated tests skip without SILERO_NATIVE_BUNDLE)
cd ttsd && uv run python -m pytest                              # Python subprocess

Documentation

File	Description
AGENTS.md	Development rules, project structure, conventions
docs/install.md	Building from source on Linux without Nix (Ubuntu 24.04+)
silero-native/	Native Silero v5 engine crate (ONNX Runtime): architecture, bundle export, parity tests
openspec/specs/	Behavior specs (OpenSpec): IPC, storage, pipeline, UI, playback
CHANGELOG.md	Change history

License

GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.md.