**Heard** is an 🏷️#open-source macOS voice companion for AI coding agents that speaks an agent's output aloud so a developer can keep working without watching the terminal. Released in July 2026 under the Apache 2.0 license, it carries first-class support for 📝Claude Code, 📝Codex, and 📝Cursor, and wraps any other CLI through heard run. The free tier runs entirely local on the open-source Kokoro voice; Pro at $15 per month and Power at $30 per month add cloud voices, personas, and hands-free voice control.
Heard occupies the output half of the voice loop that dictation tools like 📝Wispr Flow fill on the input side. Its premise is that agentic coding moved the bottleneck from typing to watching, and that a developer running several agents at once cannot read every terminal. Rather than reading output verbatim, it decides what merits narration from agent state and recent activity, voicing the most salient agent and summarizing the rest. Three listening modes span the attention range, from short hooks while coding to alerts only. It launched on 📝Product Hunt on July 25, 2026 and took the top slot for the day. Self-hosting from source is supported for anyone supplying their own 📝ElevenLabs, 📝Anthropic, or Speechify keys.
Key Features
- Context-aware narration — Decides what is worth speaking from agent state and recent activity rather than reading output verbatim, leaving routine chatter silent.
- Listening modes — Co-pilot gives short hooks while you code, Companion delivers fuller briefings for hands-off work, and Focus stays quiet until an error or a decision.
- Multi-agent awareness — Voices the most salient agent in the foreground and summarizes the others in distinct voices, so parallel sessions never talk over one another.
- Voice personas — Four options, Aria, Friday, Jarvis, and Atlas, differ in tone and speaking style, with cloud voices and persona switching gated to the paid tiers.
- Phone pairing — The Power tier relays audio to a phone and accepts spoken approval of agent actions while session state stays on the Mac, extending the loop away from the desk.