feat(voices): capped in-host voice menus, HD tier signalling, settings voice catalog (Patch A)

[rosscado]

Why

The voice catalog is about to grow 4–7x: 10 OpenAI voices are merged-and-dormant behind the API kill-switch (saypi-api #92/#215), and a third provider is under discussion (#305). On flip day, claude.ai's /voices payload becomes 20 voices — today's flat menu would render all of them, with raw credit chips (50/1k cr) as the only guidance. This PR implements Patch A of the voice-selection design (committed here, with its companion rollout plan): the catalog scales; the menu never does.

What

src/tts/VoiceCuration.ts (new, pure, unit-tested) — tier derivation from powered_by + credits (no API change needed, per the rollout plan's confirmed contract), a popularity-ranked featured set for value voices (Coral, Nova, Ash, Onyx — from community/vendor-signal research; Alloy deliberately last), a gender-diverse HD pair, and pin-current-first capped shortlists. Ranking is keyed by voice id so a future server re-skin of display names (design §7.3) can't silently degrade curation.

claude.ai menu — capped at 6 rows + a muted "More voices…" door that deep-links to the settings AI Chat tab. The raw credit chip is replaced by a single [HD] chip on premium rows plus one muted footer line ("HD voices use your monthly allowance about 20× faster"), both rendered only while tiers actually coexist. The user's stored voice is pinned first and can never vanish from the menu; the pin persists on the instance and is never applied by tearing down a menu the user has open.

pi.ai menu — the SayPi block is capped at 5 with a quiet HD suffix and the same door; Pi's native rows, its extra built-ins (voice7/8), and the PiVoiceSettings grid are untouched.

Settings → AI Chat → Voices (new) — the door's destination: the full per-host catalog on HD/Everyday shelves with descriptions and per-host selection (explicit chatbot ids — the settings page resolves to web otherwise), auth-aware empty states. Selections propagate to open host tabs via the existing voicePreferences storage listener.

openSettings(tab?) — one-shot deep link through chrome.storage.local (content scripts can't reach the settings page's localStorage); no background changes.

What you'll see today vs flip day

Pre-flip (single-tier catalogs) this is nearly dormant: no chips, no footer — just the door rows (claude.ai already serves 10 voices, so its menu tightens to 6 + door) and the new settings catalog. Flip day adds the HD signalling automatically.

Process

TDD fail-first throughout (58 new/updated assertions across 6 spec files, incl. the OpenAI + Claude catalog fixtures the rollout plan flagged as a gap). An 8-angle adversarial review pass found 7 correctness bugs pre-commit (door duplication, pin wiped by addMissingPiVoices, pin re-render deleting Pi 7/8, open-menu teardown race, stale pins, wrong sign-in prompt for authed users, throw on malformed catalog entries) — each is fixed and pinned by a test. npm test fully green (tsc + Jest + Vitest, 1664 tests).

Follow-ups (not in this PR)

• Pre-release: npm run translate for the 11 new _locales/en keys (needs translate-cli + OPENAI_API_KEY; English fallback until then).
• Free canned preview clips (sample_url) + the metered introduceVoice fix — gated on the saypi-api asset pipeline (design §4).
• Server manifest fields (featured/recommended/sibling_id) — design §5; tier badges for the PiVoiceSettings grid.
• Real-host L4 verification of the door row rendering natively on claude.ai/pi.ai.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_012DZR4Vp9B1RiKVrkfYiM1o