- One-click genre buttons play random track from that genre
- Active genre highlighted, now-playing bar shows track name
- Only genres with tracks shown, crossfade on genre switch
- M key replays active genre or picks random
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Style-matched defaults:
- Grok 4.1 Fast for edgy callers (high_energy, confrontational, comedian etc.)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 for emotional callers (quiet_nervous, sweet_earnest, emotional)
- Mistral Large 2512 for deadpan/mysterious/world-weary
- DeepSeek R1 Distill for storyteller/oversharer/conspiracy/rambler
- Gemini 2.5 Flash for know_it_all
- Llama 3.3 70B for first_time/reluctant callers
Category routing: Grok 4.1 Fast for dialog/devon/backgrounds, Gemini Flash for monitor/summary
Updated OPENROUTER_MODELS and OPENROUTER_PRICING with all new models
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Devon audio independent of caller hangup (separate stop events)
- Personal anecdotes capped at ~30% of responses (was every time)
- Interjection criteria tightened ("default is silence")
- Devon sees his own recent history to avoid repeating info
- Response variety: permits minimal reactions, confusion, silence
- Monitor prompt rewritten to be gatekeeping, not encouraging
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Avatar prefetch checks gender marker, re-fetches on mismatch
- Returning callers need 2+ actual calls before re-eligible (was 1)
- Promotion rate lowered 10% → 5% to prevent pool flooding
- Callback injection skipped for returning callers (already have context)
- Show history clarifies "you are NOT that caller" to prevent identity confusion
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Three strategies: single model, cycle through pool, style-matched
- 18 communication styles mapped to 7 models (Grok, Sonnet, Mistral, Qwen, DeepSeek, Gemini, Llama)
- Per-caller model locked for entire call, overridable mid-show
- Model badges on caller buttons and info panel
- Settings UI for strategy, pool, style mapping, fallback
- Fallback to Sonnet on model failure
- 6 new models added to pricing and dropdown
- Checkpoint persistence for all model state
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- 60s timeout + retry on all LLM calls
- 120-300s timeout on all subprocess/ffmpeg calls
- Per-clip error isolation (one failure doesn't kill the run)
- Progress indicators for each clip being processed
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Pass all caller names as Whisper initial_prompt hint for correct spelling
- Post-transcription fuzzy match corrects remaining misspellings (Levenshtein)
- Prevents AI callers from "correcting" the host on their own name
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Regex strips all parentheticals and asterisk actions before TTS
- Catches (laughs nervously), *sighs*, etc. that Grok generates
- Strengthened SPEECH ONLY instructions in caller and Devon prompts
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Route caller_dialog, devon_ask, background_gen to x-ai/grok-4
- Add Grok-4 to OPENROUTER_MODELS and OPENROUTER_PRICING
- Add Grok-specific banned phrases (I hear you, fair enough, that's wild, etc.)
- Add background gen guardrails for Grok (no active violence, no real public figures)
- Soften theme prompt hot-take language for organic connections
- Tighten Devon flirting guardrail (awkward not crude)
- Fix Devon "first day" contradiction on line 36
- Strip silence: preserve music intro, fix ad normalization (direct WAV reading)
- Strip silence: loop range starts 0.5s before audible music
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Preserve first silence in first DIALOG region (music intro before host speaks)
- Fix ad/ident normalization using direct WAV reading (accessor failed after splits)
- Loop range starts 0.5s before audible music, ends at last item
- Disable broken music lead-in nudge (intro preservation handles it)
- Caller dialog model set to Grok for testing
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Fix Devon "if that makes sense" overuse (limit to once per show)
- Suppress Devon failed lookup notifications for self-initiated searches
- Strengthen show theme prompts (2/3 callers call because of theme)
- Fix sentence trimmer splitting on abbreviations (Mr. Mrs. Dr. etc.)
- Fix cost tracker data lost on server restart (persist in checkpoint)
- Ad/ident normalization targets -4dB below dialog for perceived loudness match
- Lower cross-speaker transition threshold to 5s
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Add show theme UI in header bar + backend API (inject into caller prompts)
- Add Irish genre category for music dropdown
- Strip silence: RMS-based speaker detection (fixes Devon not being identified)
- Strip silence: Devon-specific 3s threshold for interjections
- Strip silence: sparse track item handling in shift logic
- Strip silence: music lead-in preservation after silence removal
- Strip silence: no max gap limit (IDENT/AD regions protect breaks)
- Add analyze_gaps.py tool for per-show threshold analysis
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Hide h1 (sr-only) on homepage — banner already shows show name
- Promote tagline as visual lead after banner
- Fix avatar gender: add .gender marker files, re-fetch on mismatch
- Clear stale avatar cache so all re-fetch with correct gender
- Blacklist Celeste voice from caller pool
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Remove cover art from hero (duplicated in clips below)
- Merge about section into hero for single flowing layout
- Center hero content, remove side-by-side layout
- Fix _match_voices_to_styles() bypassing BLACKLISTED_VOICES —
Sebastian could get assigned to non-Silas callers
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Share buttons on episode and clip cards (Web Share API + clipboard fallback)
- NEW badge on latest episode card
- Sticky call-in CTA bar (appears after hero scrolls out)
- Daily AI Briefing newsletter cross-promote in footer
- Bump cache versions to v=5
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Website:
- Add persistent top nav across all pages
- Add skip-to-content links, focus-visible styles, ARIA on audio player
- Fix text contrast for WCAG AA compliance
- Add 600px breakpoint, mobile typography scaling
- Extract shared footer.js, player.js, episode.js components
- Episode pagination (10 + Load More), featured clip dedup
- Worker meta injection for social crawler OG tags
- Unify Plausible analytics proxy across all pages
- Sanitize innerHTML for XSS safety
- Custom 404 page, enhanced llms.txt, fix sitemap
- Bump cache versions to v=4
Reaper:
- Add dual silence threshold: 2.5s for speaker transitions, 6s for same-speaker gaps
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Add real-time LLM/TTS cost tracking with live status bar display and post-show reports
- Fix PTT bug where Devon suggestion layout shift stopped recording via mouseleave
- Devon: facts-only during calls, full personality between calls
- Double WEIRD topic pool (109→203), bump weight to 14-25%
- Auto-generate YouTube thumbnails with bold hook text in publish pipeline
- LLM SEO: llms.txt, robots.txt for LLM crawlers, structured data, BreadcrumbList schemas
- Publish episode 37
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Massively expanded all 8 caller topic pools from ~1200 to ~2500 entries to
reduce repeat calls. Added persistent topic history (data/used_topics_history.json)
with 30-day aging to prevent cross-episode duplicates. Published episode 35.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Show full stderr (head + tail) instead of truncating to last 500 chars
- Add --timeout=60000 and --log=verbose to Remotion render command
- Clamp word timestamps to [0, duration] to prevent negative/OOB values
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Castopod password, DB password, BunnyCDN keys, Postiz JWT/IDs,
and monitoring token all moved to environment variables.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Whisper base → distil-large-v3 for much better live transcription accuracy
- Add context hints to transcription (caller name, screening status)
- Increase beam_size 3→5 for better decoding
- Add explicit role clarification in caller system prompt so LLM knows Luke is the host
- Prefix host messages with [Host Luke] in LLM conversation
- Fix upload_clips episode list sorting (natural numeric order)
- Episodes 26-28 transcripts, data updates, misc fixes
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Fix TTS text pipeline: new caps handling (spell out unknown acronyms, lowercase
emphasis words), action-word lookahead for parenthetical stripping, abbreviation
expansions (US→United States, NM→New Mexico), pronunciation fixes
- Inworld TTS: camelCase API fields, speakingRate per-voice overrides, retry logic
with exponential backoff (3 attempts)
- Footer redesign: SVG icons for social/podcast links across all pages
- Stats page: show "Rate us on Spotify" instead of "not public" placeholder
- New voices, expanded caller prompts and problem scenarios
- Social posting via Postiz, YouTube upload in publish pipeline
- Episode transcripts 15-25, terms page, sitemap updates
- Fix invoice script: match Timing totals using merged Task+App intervals
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Bypass flaky YouTube RSS ingestion by converting MP3+cover to MP4
and uploading via YouTube Data API. Videos are auto-added to the
podcast playlist. Includes yt_auth.py for token management.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
luke