One thing that gets tiring with Claude Code is keeping up with it. It reads files, changes code, runs tests, fixes things, and comes back with another chunk of terminal output you need to process before deciding what happens next. Add a couple of agents or parallel tasks and the cognitive overhead stacks up quickly. I started having Claude tell me what it just did instead. After every meaningful task, Claude writes a short plain-English summary. A local script turns it into speech and plays it in the background. Something like:
“Done. The login issue was caused by the refresh token expiring too early. I fixed the refresh logic, added a regression test, and everything passes.” Usually 20 seconds or less. It sounds like a small thing, but I’ve been running it daily for about a month and it has noticeably reduced the mental overhead of using Claude Code. I don’t have to keep switching my attention back to the terminal just to find out where things stand. There is one trap here: don’t let the spoken summary become a substitute for reviewing the work. I use it for situational awareness, not verification. Also, don’t make Claude narrate everything. If it talks constantly, you’ve just replaced visual noise with audio noise. The Free TTS engine is Kokoro. It runs locally, no API key, no usage cost. I use
kokoro-onnx, so I don’t need Torch. The current API supportsKokoro(...).create(text, voice=..., speed=..., lang=...). Notes in comments, submitted by /u/tinyhousefever
Originally posted by u/tinyhousefever on r/ClaudeCode
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