Blog Audio: Gemini TTS Narration for Blog Posts

Blog Audio: Gemini TTS Narration for Blog Posts

Bundled paths below use host Markdown substitution of ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}; it is not an exported shell variable. Resolve them before execution, quote paths, and refuse nonabsolute overrides. Pass blog_reference_root resolved from ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../blog/references, blog_template_root from ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../blog/templates, and needed sibling roots to agents. Read the main reference orchestration-details.md before loading project context; pass only its helper-fenced output to downstream agents.

Generate professional audio narration of blog content using Google's Gemini TTS. Three modes: summary (200-300 word spoken overview), full article read-aloud, or two-speaker podcast dialogue. 30 prebuilt voices, over 130 languages on Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS (over 100 on Flash-Lite; Google's speech-generation page, checked 2026-10-12), HTML5 embed output.

Cost and consent gate (mandatory, read first)

This skill spends the user's Google AI credit and writes audio files.

• What it spends: one paid Gemini TTS call per text chunk. Long text is split into chunks, so a full read-aloud costs several calls. The script's --max-chunks flag caps the chunks per run (default 12); never raise it without telling the user the new worst-case cost.
• Cost basis: audio output tokens at 25 tokens per second of audio. On 2026-10-12 https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing listed gemini-3.8-flash-tts at $9.00 per 1M audio tokens (about $0.00225 per 10 seconds) and gemini-3.8-flash-lite-tts at $6.00 (about $0.0015 per 10 seconds), both through 2026-12-31 with higher listed rates from 2027-01-01. Run --dry-run --json first for the script's estimate.
• What it writes: the audio file under audio/ (or --output) and, in setup only, the managed .venv.
• Consent: before the FIRST paid call in a session, state the mode, model, chunk count, and estimated cost, then wait for an explicit yes. The yes covers only that run. Writing a blog post does not consent to audio.
• No uncapped spend: never retry or loop on paid calls beyond the cap; one retry on a transient error, then report.
• Skips: if the user declines, the key is missing, or setup is absent, skip and return ONE line for the orchestrator's "Fallbacks and skips" summary, such as "Audio: no API key set, skipped".