How to Configure OpenClaw Voice Mode with ElevenLabs
Voice mode transforms OpenClaw into a conversational AI assistant you can speak to naturally. This guide covers the complete voice pipeline: speech-to-text with Whisper, text-to-speech with ElevenLabs, wake word detection, audio configuration, and latency optimization.
Why This Is Hard to Do Yourself
These are the common pitfalls that trip people up.
Audio pipeline complexity
Microphone input, speech-to-text, LLM processing, text-to-speech, speaker output — each step can fail independently
Voice latency
Round-trip from speech to AI response to voice output must be under 2 seconds to feel natural
Wake word reliability
False positives (triggers on random words) and false negatives (doesn't trigger on the wake word) both frustrate users
ElevenLabs costs
High-quality voice synthesis is expensive. A chatty voice setup can cost $50-100+/month in ElevenLabs API fees alone.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Configure speech-to-text (STT)
Configure text-to-speech (TTS) with ElevenLabs
Warning: ElevenLabs charges per character. The `eleven_turbo_v2_5` model is cheaper and faster than `eleven_monolingual_v1` but slightly lower quality. Start with turbo for most use cases.
Set up wake word detection
Configure the audio pipeline
Test voice mode
Voice Mode Has Many Moving Parts
STT, TTS, wake word, audio pipeline, latency tuning — voice mode requires careful configuration of 5+ systems working together. Our experts get it running smoothly so you can just start talking.
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