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Voice

Voice lets roamd tell you when something on your computer needs you, and lets you speak a command instead of typing it. It's off until you turn it on, one computer at a time.

Private mode: everything stays on your device

 your computer          our website            YOUR BROWSER
 -------------          -----------            ------------
 terminal output --[ LOCKED ]--> passes --[ LOCKED ]--> unlocked here
                                 through                 |
                                                         v
                                             "is this worth saying?"
                                               no  -> stays quiet
                                               yes -> shown + spoken
                                                      (voice on this
                                                       device only)

What it says:

  • Errors, like "Error: permission denied".
  • Questions waiting for you, like a password prompt or "Continue? [Y/n]".
  • Long commands finishing, like "cargo finished after 4 minutes" (you choose how long counts as long).
  • Your own words: any line containing a word you listed on the Account page.

Everything else (ordinary output, the command you just typed, full-screen programs like vim or top) stays quiet.

Speaking commands. Under the terminal there's a command box. Type or dictate into it, check it, then press Enter. Nothing is sent until you do, so a misheard word can't run by itself. Your phone's keyboard microphone works here. Where the browser can understand speech on the device itself, a Speak button appears too.

Why it's private: your browser already has the unlocked terminal text, so it does all the deciding and speaking itself. We never receive the text or your voice. roamd only uses voices and speech recognition that run on your device. Some browsers offer "online" voices that send the words away to be spoken; roamd never uses those.

Limits

  • Deciding what's "important" uses simple rules, so it can miss things or speak up for something harmless.
  • The Speak button is only offered by some browsers, and hasn't been tried on real phones and computers yet.
  • Some browsers have no on-device voice. Then messages are shown under the terminal but not spoken.

Planned: Smart mode. An optional mode where an AI decides what matters, following instructions you write. That would mean terminal text passes through us, so it will be clearly marked, off by default, and we won't keep any of it. Private mode will stay available.

Private mode

All processing is in the web app, after SSH decryption. No terminal text, audio or transcript is sent to the hub or any third party.

 SSH channel data (decrypted in the browser)
    |
    +--> xterm (display)
    +--> narrator (only while Voice is on for this machine)
           - strip control sequences (colours, cursor, titles),
             honouring carriage-return redraws
           - drop the echo of the command the user typed
           - wait for a short quiet period, then judge the burst
           - full-screen (alternate buffer) programs: ignored
                |
                v
           messages --> on-screen log (ARIA live region)
                    --> speechSynthesis, local voices only
Rule Trigger
Error A new line matching common failure words (error, fatal, failed, denied, panic, traceback…); one message per burst with a count of the rest
Waiting The unfinished last line looks like a prompt ([y/N], (yes/no), password:, a trailing ?); said once
Finished The shell prompt returns after a command that ran longer than the user's threshold
Keyword A new line containing one of the user's keywords

Messages are length-capped. Input the narrator sees is limited to what the user typed into this terminal, and is only used to recognise the echoed command.

Voices and speech recognition

  • Speech output: only voices the browser marks as local (localService) are used. If there are none, messages are shown but not spoken.
  • Speech input: the Speak button appears only where the browser supports on-device recognition. It asks for on-device processing and refuses otherwise; there is no fallback to a cloud recogniser. Results fill the command box and are sent only on Enter.
  • Microphone: the site's permissions policy allows the microphone for roamd's own page only, and turns off camera, location, USB and payment features entirely.

Settings

Per-machine on/off, keywords and the "long command" threshold are a vault item: encrypted in the browser like the rest of the vault and synced to the account's other browsers.

Limits

  • The rules are heuristics: they can miss or over-report. History recall and tab completion hide the exact command, so the next line is assumed to be its echo.
  • On-device recognition is a new browser feature: not yet tested on real devices.
  • Smart mode (planned, not built): an optional cloud AI with a user-editable system prompt. It would send terminal text and audio through the hub to a model provider, so it will be opt-in per machine, labelled, with no logging or storage on our side; the provider's retention policy would apply. This page will be updated when it exists.