Say

---
name: say
description: >
  Speak a short sentence out loud using the macOS `say` command. Use when the
  user runs /say, or asks to "say it out loud", "speak", or "tell me out
  loud". Also used by the notify skill to deliver audible updates. One plain
  English sentence at most -- never paragraphs, links, code, long numbers, or
  technical data.
---

# Say

Turn whatever the user asks for into one short sentence and speak it.

## The one hard rule

**One spoken sentence, the way a person would say it out loud.**

If it can't be said in one breath, it's too long. Pick the single thing that
matters and drop the rest.

## What a sentence may contain

Only plain English words a human would speak to a colleague.

| Don't speak                                  | Speak instead                       |
| -------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| `https://github.com/nvie/skills/pull/42`     | "Your pull request is up."          |
| "Tests: 412 passed, 3 failed in 38.2s"       | "Three tests failed."               |
| "`TypeError: cannot read 'id' of undefined`" | "The build broke on a type error."  |
| "Deployed v2.14.3-rc.1 to fly-ams-prod-2"    | "The deploy to production is done." |
| "Commit 9ed04ac pushed to origin/main"       | "Your commit is pushed."            |

- No links, file paths, code, commands, hashes, version strings, or IDs.
- No long numbers. Small counts are fine ("three tests failed"); round or
  drop anything else ("about two minutes", not "127 seconds").
- No symbols or markdown that a speech engine would read literally or
  mangle. Write "and", not "&". Abbreviations people say out loud ("CI",
  "PR") are fine.
- No preamble ("Here's an update:"). Just the sentence.

## How to speak it

Run it with Bash, text in single quotes:

```sh
pkill -f '^say -r '; while pgrep -qf '^say --rate='; do sleep 1; done; say -r 190 'The deploy to production is done.'
```

For a notification from the notify skill, end with this instead:

```sh
say --rate=190 'The deploy to production is done.'
```

The two spellings of the rate are what tell the speech apart, so two voices
never overlap and notifications are never lost:

- The `pkill` stops ordinary speech (`-r`), so a new sentence or notification
  cuts it off.
- The `while` waits for a notification (`--rate=`) to finish, so nothing cuts
  one off.

Avoid apostrophes in the sentence ("it is", not "it's") so the single quotes
stay intact. 190 is a bit above the usual 175 words per minute. Don't pass a
voice; the user's system default applies.

When the user ran `/say` directly, don't print anything after speaking
besides the sentence itself. When another skill (like notify) speaks through
this one, that skill decides what goes in the transcript.

## Examples

**User:** "/say the tests finished"
→ speaks "The tests are done."

**User:** "/say summarize the PR review results" (review found two blocking
issues in the auth middleware and five nits)
→ speaks "The review found two blocking issues, both in the auth code."

## Checklist

- [ ] Exactly one sentence
- [ ] Sounds natural spoken aloud
- [ ] No links, paths, code, IDs, versions, or long numbers
- [ ] No apostrophes inside the single quotes
- [ ] On a direct `/say`, nothing printed except the sentence