OpenClaw ElevenLabs Skill: Add Voice Output to Your AI Agent

Text agents answer questions. Voice agents answer questions out loud. The ElevenLabs skill bridges that gap — giving your OpenClaw agent a natural-sounding voice for notifications, audio summaries, or conversational interfaces. Setup takes under 10 minutes.

Why Voice Output Matters

Most OpenClaw agents live in text channels — Slack, Telegram, Discord. Voice output opens different use cases: hands-free briefings, accessibility features, audio notifications for background agents, and voice-first interfaces on mobile and smart speakers.

What the ElevenLabs integration delivers:

• High-quality TTS — indistinguishable from human voice on most content at standard settings
• Voice cloning — use a custom cloned voice to match your brand or persona
• Streaming audio — real-time audio delivery for long-form responses
• Multilingual support — 29 languages supported with automatic language detection

ElevenLabs API Setup

Create an ElevenLabs account at elevenlabs.io. Navigate to your profile settings and copy your API key. Find your preferred voice in the Voice Library, open it, and copy the voice_id from the URL or voice settings panel.

# ElevenLabs credentials for OpenClaw
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID=21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM  # example: Rachel voice

Store the API key in OpenClaw's secrets manager. Voice IDs are not sensitive — you can hardcode them in your config file or reference them by name if you set up voice aliases.

OpenClaw Configuration

skills:
  elevenlabs:
    enabled: true
    api_key: ${ELEVENLABS_API_KEY}
    default_voice: ${ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID}
    model: eleven_multilingual_v2
    streaming: true
    output_format: mp3_128kbps
    voice_settings:
      stability: 0.5
      similarity_boost: 0.75
      style: 0.0
      use_speaker_boost: true

The eleven_multilingual_v2 model handles 29 languages automatically. If you only need English, use eleven_monolingual_v1 — it's slightly faster and uses the same character credits.

Voice Workflow Patterns

The most common pattern is a morning briefing that summarises overnight activity and delivers it as audio:

skills:
  morning_audio_brief:
    trigger: cron(0 7 * * 1-5)
    actions:
      - skill: web_search
        query: "AI news today"
        results: 3
      - skill: summarize
        input: "{{web_search.results}}"
        style: brief
      - skill: elevenlabs
        action: text_to_speech
        text: "Good morning. Here is your AI briefing for today. {{summarize.output}}"
        save_to: "briefings/{{date}}.mp3"

For real-time voice responses in a Telegram bot, pipe the ElevenLabs output directly to the channel:

skills:
  voice_reply:
    trigger: event(telegram.message)
    actions:
      - skill: elevenlabs
        action: text_to_speech
        text: "{{agent.response}}"
        streaming: true
      - channel: telegram
        action: send_voice
        chat_id: "{{event.chat_id}}"
        audio: "{{elevenlabs.audio_data}}"

Common Mistakes

Sending very long text (over 5,000 characters) in a single call causes slow response and high credit usage. Break long content into segments and send as separate TTS calls that play sequentially.

• Using the wrong model for the language — monolingual v1 degrades on non-English text. Use multilingual v2 for any non-English content.
• Not handling audio output format compatibility — some channels expect OGG for voice messages (Telegram uses OGG/Opus). Set output_format accordingly per channel.
• Stability too low for informational content — low stability settings (under 0.3) add expressiveness but reduce consistency. For news briefings and factual content, keep stability above 0.5.
• Ignoring character count in workflows — a daily workflow that generates 3,000 characters uses 90,000 characters/month. That exceeds the free tier by 9x. Budget character usage before deploying scheduled workflows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the ElevenLabs skill require a paid account?
The free tier gives 10,000 characters/month, enough for testing. For production workflows, the Starter plan ($5/month, 30k chars) or higher is recommended.

Which ElevenLabs voices work with OpenClaw?
Any voice from your ElevenLabs account — including pre-built and custom cloned voices. Reference voices by their voice_id from the ElevenLabs dashboard.

Can OpenClaw stream audio output in real-time?
Yes. Set streaming: true in the skill config to receive audio chunks as they generate rather than waiting for the full clip.

What audio formats does the ElevenLabs skill output?
MP3 (default), PCM, and OGG are supported. MP3 at 128kbps is the best balance of quality and file size for most use cases.

Can I use a cloned voice with OpenClaw?
Yes. Clone a voice in ElevenLabs, copy the voice_id, and set it as the default_voice in your OpenClaw skill config.

How do I control speech rate and stability?
Use the stability (0-1) and similarity_boost parameters. Higher stability reduces expressiveness but improves consistency for informational content.