HeyRocky

ElevenLabs Voice Narration

What this page covers

This page explains how to use Hermes TTS for polished narration, with special attention to ElevenLabs. Hermes supports Edge TTS by default and paid providers such as ElevenLabs, OpenAI, MiniMax, Mistral, Gemini, and xAI.

Hermes changes quickly, so treat the official documentation as the source of truth and use the built-in CLI to inspect the local install before editing config by hand.

Fast path

```bash

hermes tools enable tts

```

```bash

hermes config set tts.provider elevenlabs

```

```bash

hermes config set ELEVENLABS_API_KEY <paste-key-in-terminal-not-chat>

```

```bash

hermes config set tts.elevenlabs.voice_id pNInz6obpgDQGcFmaJgB

hermes config set tts.elevenlabs.model_id eleven_multilingual_v2

```

```bash

hermes chat --toolsets tts -q "Convert this sentence to speech: Hermes narration test."

```

Practical checklist

  • Use `ELEVENLABS_API_KEY` as a secret and never put the raw value in wiki articles, prompts, commits, or screenshots.
  • The default ElevenLabs model in the docs is `eleven_multilingual_v2`; Hermes applies provider-specific input caps so long scripts may be truncated per request.
  • For Telegram/Discord voice bubbles, know whether the provider outputs Opus/OGG natively or requires ffmpeg conversion.
  • Keep narration text public-safe: no private emails, credentials, internal customer data, or unpublished secrets.
  • Save final MP3/OGG paths and verify nonzero file sizes before publishing scripts as production-ready.

Common pitfalls

  • Assuming the TTS tool is enabled just because config exists.
  • Generating from a whole script with production notes instead of only the narration text.
  • Missing ffmpeg when the destination needs voice-bubble conversion.

Verification checklist

  • `hermes tools list` includes `tts` for the active platform.
  • The generated audio file exists and has a nonzero size.
  • The audio opens/plays locally or is accepted by the delivery platform.
  • The script text was checked for public-safe content first.

Official reference

https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/features/tts/

Related pages