Accessibility and voice
Turn colour and motion off, have replies read aloud, and talk to 8gent instead of typing.
No colour
8gent follows the NO_COLOR convention:
NO_COLOR=1 8gent- No colour anywhere: header, footer, tabs, cards and chat.
- Bold, dim and inverse stay, because they are not colour. The cursor is drawn in inverse, so you can still see where you are typing.
- Permission modes still read without colour: the footer names the mode, Infinite is bold, and tabs carry the mode's name or a letter (
P,G,∞).
The first match decides:
FORCE_COLORset:0turns colour off,1to3turns it on, even overNO_COLOR.NO_COLORset to anything non-empty: colour off.TERM=dumb: colour off.- Otherwise 8gent follows what your terminal supports.
/theme light, /theme dark or /theme auto sets light or dark. Restart 8gent for it to take effect.
Update to get this
Full NO_COLOR support needs a current release. Run 8gent update; see Install.
Less motion
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
8GENT_REDUCED_MOTION=1 | No motion anywhere, including the splash. Animations draw their final frame at once |
Ctrl+A | Animations off or on for this session |
8GENT_NO_INTRO=1 | No splash |
performance.introBanner in ~/.8gent/settings.json | "off" never shows the splash, "on" shows it every launch, "auto" the first run and after updates |
Screen readers
Mode changes are written as a line in the chat, not only shown as colour, so a screen reader hears them:
Permissions: Guarded: safe steps run, risky ones still ask (⇧Tab to change)Ctrl+L steps through messages one at a time; Enter opens one on its own.
Replies read aloud
On a Mac, replies are spoken in your computer's natural voice by default. Each tab has its own voice (Daniel, Karen and Moira out of the box) so you can tell tabs apart by ear.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/voice off, /voice on | Stop or start speaking replies, remembered |
/voice status | Current voice settings |
/settings | Pick voices per tab |
Off a Mac, 8gent stays silent. Voices are set under voice in ~/.8gent/settings.json: outputEnabled, ttsVoice, and perAgent for the per-tab voices.
Talk instead of type
/voice chat starts a spoken conversation: 8gent listens, transcribes on your machine, answers, and speaks the answer. /voice stop ends it. It needs sox and whisper.cpp:
brew install sox whisper-cppReading support
/adhd on turns on a reading mode that bolds the start of each word, with optional focus sounds: /adhd lofi, /adhd rainsound, /adhd whitenoise, /adhd ambient, /adhd classical, /adhd stop.