Read Aloud

Speak a child's outstanding chores to a media player — "Ella, you have three things left: make your bed, brush your teeth and pack your bag."

Useful on a kitchen speaker at the point in the morning when nobody is looking at a screen.

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Calling It

action: taskmate.read_aloud
data:
  child_id: <child_id>
  media_player: media_player.kitchen   # optional; falls back to the Settings default
  tts_entity: tts.piper                # optional; falls back to Settings, then the only one installed
  message: "Dinner is ready"           # optional; says this instead of the chore summary

Field	Effect
child_id	Whose chores to read
media_player	Where to speak. Falls back to the default in Settings.
tts_entity	Which TTS engine. Falls back to Settings, then to the only one installed if there is just one.
message	Speak this instead of the generated summary.

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Wording

The sentence comes from parent-editable templates in Settings, not from TaskMate's translations. The frontend locales don't reach the backend, and a family may well want phrasing that isn't one of the eight shipped languages — or simply their own turn of phrase.

Setting	Default	Placeholders
read_aloud_template	{name}, you have {count} things left: {chores}.	{name} {count} {chores}
read_aloud_one_template	{name}, you have one thing left: {chores}.	same
read_aloud_done_template	{name}, you're all done. Nice one!	same
read_aloud_joiner	and	joins the last two chores

A template with a bad placeholder logs a warning and falls back to the built-in wording rather than silencing the feature. A typo in a sentence should not mean the speaker goes quiet with no explanation.

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Events

Fires taskmate_read_aloud with child_id, media_player, tts_entity and message.

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Example Automation

Read the morning list at 07:45 on school days:

triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "07:45:00"
conditions:
  - condition: time
    weekday: [mon, tue, wed, thu, fri]
actions:
  - action: taskmate.read_aloud
    data:
      child_id: <child_id>
      media_player: media_player.kitchen

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Related

• Services — the full taskmate.read_aloud signature
• Voice Assistants — asking Assist about chores and points
• Settings — the templates, default media player and TTS entity
• Notifications — the push side of the same job
• Localization — why these templates are editable rather than translated