Build on abs

The whole project, in four places

There's very little to learn. Everything abs does lives in one of these:

# the program — commands, persona, hooks, usage, all of it
abs.sh

# voice, both directions (local, no cloud)
transcribe.py   # voice note  → text
speak.py        # text        → voice note

# your runtime state, owner-only (never in git)
~/.abs/          # rc.json, access.json, usage.json …

The agent's behaviour isn't in a config file — it's the system prompt abs appends at launch, built in build_prompt().

Point it at a different model

Set a default model per profile, applied on every launch. An explicit abs --model … on the command line always wins for that one session.

abs config model opus        # default for this profile
abs config model --clear       # back to Claude Code's default
abs --model sonnet           # just this session

To change how the default is stored or applied, the logic is in cmd_config() (stores it) and cmd_run() (passes --model at launch).

Rewrite the persona & tone

How abs talks to you — when it messages, how short it keeps things, its safety rules — is one block of text appended to the session as a system prompt. Edit the heredoc in build_prompt() and it takes effect on the next launch. Nothing is compiled; it's plain English.

Replace the voice engine

Voice is two standalone scripts with a dead-simple contract. Keep the same in/out and you can drop in any engine — a different Whisper size, a cloud STT, another TTS voice.

# in:  an audio file path  →  out: transcript on stdout
transcribe.py <file.oga>

# in:  text  →  out: a voice note sent to Telegram
speak.py "the text to speak"

abs only ever calls these two files, so swapping engines never touches the main script.

Tune how fast it goes quiet

Auto-silent trips after a set number of back-to-back terminal prompts. Want it to hold on longer, or mute sooner? Change one constant.

readonly SILENT_STREAK=3    # prompts at the terminal before it mutes

The counting itself lives in cmd_silent_hook() just below — that's where a Telegram message resets the streak.

Add your own command

Commands are a plain case in main(). Write a cmd_yours() function, add one line to the dispatch, and abs yours works. No registration, no plugin system.

cmd_hello() { ok "hi from $PROFILE"; }

# in main()'s case block:
hello) cmd_hello ;;

Change what the status bar shows

The bottom-bar dot and usage are rendered by cmd_statusline(); the 5h / week glance itself is formatted in usage_glance_str(). Edit either to change the text, order, or what's shown.