Usage

Basic Commands

Listen to a Thread

dpo-reader listen "https://discuss.python.org/t/your-thread"

This fetches the thread, synthesizes audio with different voices per author, and plays it.

Interactive TUI

dpo-reader listen "https://discuss.python.org/t/your-thread" --ui

The TUI shows the current post text alongside the author list. Audio generates in the background while you listen.

Key	Action
Space	Play/Pause
←/→	Skip 5 seconds
↑/↓	Speed up/down
n/p	Next/Previous post
l	Toggle logs
q	Quit

Start from a Specific Post

Discourse URLs with a post number work automatically:

dpo-reader listen "https://discuss.python.org/t/topic/12345/50" --ui

Or use the -s flag:

dpo-reader listen "https://discuss.python.org/t/topic/12345" -s 50

Export Without Playing

dpo-reader export "https://discuss.python.org/t/your-thread" -o thread.wav

Preview and Info

See what you’re getting into before generating audio:

# Show author stats and estimated duration
dpo-reader info "https://discuss.python.org/t/your-thread"

# Show first few posts
dpo-reader preview "https://discuss.python.org/t/your-thread"

Options

-o, --output PATH         Output file (default: output.wav)
-e, --engine ENGINE       openai | bark | piper
-s, --start-post INT      Start from this post number
-n, --max-posts INT       Limit number of posts
--ui                      Interactive TUI with controls
--no-attribution          Skip "Author says:" prefix
--no-play                 Don't auto-play after generating
-c, --cache-dir PATH      Cache audio chunks (resume if generation crashes)
-p, --pause FLOAT         Seconds between posts (default: 1.5)
-f, --file PATH           Load from local JSON file (for testing)

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
OPENAI_API_KEY	Required for OpenAI engine

You can also put these in a .env file in your working directory.

Web UI (Experimental)

There’s a browser-based player that uses Web Speech API for text-to-speech:

make web

This serves a local web interface at http://localhost:8080. Paste a Discourse URL and it will fetch the thread and play it using your browser’s built-in TTS.

Limitations:

• Some Discourse instances block CORS requests from browsers

• Voice quality depends on your browser/OS speech synthesis

• For best results, use the CLI with Bark or OpenAI engines instead