v0.3.6

A large release (168 commits since v0.3.5). The headline is the **Longform suite** — produce full audiobooks and multi-voice stories from text, EPUB, or PDF — alongside a real **engine-routing** layer that tells you up front when an engine will fall back to CPU instead of finding out mid-synth. Dubbing, first-run, and install reliability all get a pass too.

### Added

- **Longform: Stories + Audiobook editors.** Two new tabs turn long text into finished audio. **Audiobook** takes a script (or imports plain text / EPUB / PDF), auto-splits it into chapters, and renders a chaptered `.m4b` with metadata, cover art, and per-chapter preview/resume. **Stories** is a multi-voice editor — assign a different voice per line, preview, and export the whole thing through the same server-side renderer. Both share one render core (loudness, metadata, cover art) and one live SSE progress stream, and you can convert a project between Story and Audiobook in place. (#402, #403, #404, #408, #409, #411, #412, #413, #426, #435, #436, #447)
- **Longform: PDF & EPUB ingest.** "Import" on the Audiobook tab accepts EPUB and PDF (not just plain text) and auto-chapters the result, so an existing ebook becomes an audiobook without manual copy-paste. (#412, #459)
- **Longform: two-pass loudnorm mastering.** Audiobook/Story exports now run a measure-then-normalize loudnorm pass for accurate ACX/podcast loudness targets. A slow or broken measure pass degrades gracefully to single-pass rather than aborting the render. (#449, #455)
- **Longform: crash-resume.** An interrupted render is resumable without re-submitting the original input — the compiled plan is persisted to the job dir and finished chapters are reused, so a crash mid-book doesn't cost you the whole render. (#470)
- **Longform: pronunciation control + SSML-lite prosody.** A per-render pronunciation lexicon (word respelling) plus an in-app pronunciation editor and markup reference, and inline prosody markers — `[slow]` / `[fast]` / `[emphasis]` / `[spell]` — for fine-grained delivery. (#419, #421, #422)
- **Stories: global reading-speed control.** A toolbar slider (0.5–2.0×) sets one speed for every line that doesn't have its own per-line override; the per-line slider still wins. Persisted as a UI preference. (#415, #416)
- **Unified LongformProject store.** Audiobook metadata, scripts, and prefs persist in a single project store (with a `v4→v5` migration), and finished books/stories now show up alongside other work in **Projects**. (#417, #443, #444)
- **Portable personas (`.ovsvoice`).** Export any voice as a self-contained, fully-local persona bundle — identity, optional reference clip, consent attestation, SPDX license, and a watermarked preview — and import it back into another OmniVoice install. A privacy toggle ships a **preview-only** bundle so no raw recording of your voice has to travel. Verified-own-voice status can't be forged by hand-editing a bundle (real recording + consent text + attestation required). Legacy `.omnivoice` files still import. See [docs/persona-format.md](https://github.com/debpalash/OmniVoice-Studio/blob/main/docs/persona-format.md). (#29)
- **Engine routing — no more silent CPU fallback.** A host device probe and routing resolver now decide where each engine actually runs, and the verdict is surfaced before you hit Synthesize: the **Settings → Engines** picker shows a per-engine compatibility matrix, and **preflight** / **diagnose** report the active engine's GPU verdict (accelerated / caveat / CPU-fallback / unavailable). At synth time every TTS entry point (`/generate`, `/v1/audio/speech`) enforces the same routing — an engine that can't use this host's GPU returns an explicit error or an `X-OmniVoice-Routing` header instead of silently dropping to CPU or dying mid-synth. (#21)
- **Diagnostics suite.** New self-check tooling for when something's wrong: a `/system/diagnose` report (and matching backend `--diagnose`), a persistent **error journal** surfaced in Settings, and a scrubbed **diagnostic bundle** (home dirs stripped to `~/`, no tokens/keys) you can attach to a bug report. Paired with structured GitHub **Issue Forms** (bug / install / feature) for cleaner reports. (#433, #456)
- **Dubbing: multi-speaker per-speaker voice assignment.** When diarization detects multiple speakers, each segment is now bound to its speaker's cloned voice automatically instead of landing on "Default" and needing manual fixes; per-segment reference clips are still preferred for quality where present. Also adds an optional speaker-count hint for diarization. (#275, #486, #490)
- **Dubbing: Smart Fit timing + second-pass QC.** A Smart Fit timing strategy (planner, fingerprints, per-segment video retime + drift absorption + fitted subtitles) plus a second-pass ASR QC that flags lines whose dub drifts from the target timing — wired into the dub editor UI. Includes a timeline segment editor (drag, snap-to-onset, keyboard a11y), speech-onset alignment, regional dialect targeting, and per-segment clone references. (#280, #347, #350, #369, #370, #458)
- **Dubbing: dedicated Dub home.** A projects/history landing for dubbing with project rename. (#435)
- **Voice Console workspace.** Clone and Design are consolidated into one Voice workspace with right-side panels, a shared waveform player, an identity recipe line / Active-voice card, and a free-text "describe your voice" field that maps natural language to design parameters. (#317, #374, #376, #378, #395, #396, #397)
- **Unified first-run setup.** Nothing installs until you confirm a plan: pick an install mode (installed / portable), a storage location, and (on restricted networks) custom PyPI/HF/python-build-standalone mirrors — with a minimum-free-space gate before anything downloads. Followed by a guided studio-console wizard with platform-aware hints, resume reassurance, and download ETAs. (#286, #295, #297, #298)
- **Dictation: local-LLM refinement.** Opt-in local-LLM cleanup of final transcripts (collapsing Whisper hallucination loops), available on both live dictation and the REST `/transcribe` path; plus opt-in NLMS acoustic echo cancellation for dictating over playback. Configure a remote LLM endpoint (Ollama / vLLM / LM Studio) in Settings. (#356, #357, #363, #399, #400, #457)
- **Unlimited-length TTS + streaming.** Sentence-boundary chunking with crossfade removes the per-generation length cap, and a new sentence-by-sentence `/ws/tts` streams audio as it's produced. An inline `[pause Nms]` marker inserts measured silence in generated speech. (#276, #357, #358)
- **MCP server v1.** OmniVoice mounts an MCP server on `/mcp` (with a stdio shim and per-agent voice binding) so it can act as a local TTS/STT provider for agentic pipelines. (#368)
- **Remote-backend access.** Point the desktop UI at a remote backend URL with a bearer key (Tailscale-documented), and an opt-in Hugging Face token field in the setup flow. (#303, #364)
- **"Fund Claude Max" support experience.** The donate page gets a real goal bar with a "Join N supporters" social-proof line and suggested amounts, plus Pip the mascot and a non-blocking "postcard" toast that appears only *after* a success (a finished dub, a saved clone, a longform export) — never on errors, setup, or first run — with escalating cooldowns and a one-click "don't ask again". (#494)

### Fixed

- **Transcription/dubbing failed when ffmpeg wasn't on `PATH`** (notably on Windows). WhisperX now decodes audio through OmniVoice's own validated ffmpeg binary instead of a bare `PATH` lookup, so ASR works without a system ffmpeg install. (#479)
- **Translation defaulted the source language to English.** Dubbing/translation now guesses the source language from the text instead of assuming `en`, fixing wrong-direction translations. (#478)
- **Cinematic / LLM dubbing features failed out of the box** because `openai` wasn't bundled. The client is now a runtime dependency, so those paths work on a fresh install. (#484)
- **`pkg_resources missing` install dead-end (#248).** The auto-repair ran `uv pip install setuptools`, which `uv` treated as a no-op when setuptools *metadata* was present but its files had been removed (commonly by Windows Defender quarantine or a partial extract). Both repair sites now use `--reinstall` to force re-extraction, and the error/hint text suggests the working command plus an antivirus-exclusion note. (#248)
- **A stuck backend trapped users on a buttonless splash (#474).** The bootstrap splash now has a per-stage stall watchdog: if a non-terminal stage sits past its budget (20 min for dep install, 120 s otherwise), it flips to the failed state with actionable hints, the live log, and Retry / Clean-&-Retry — instead of polling forever with no way out. (#474)
- **Changing the model-download location in Settings had no effect (#480).** The desktop launcher injected a stale models dir that overrode the per-user value, so new downloads kept going to the old folder and "Effective location" stayed wrong. The per-user env file now wins, so the in-app Settings path is authoritative. (#480)
- **Backend crashed on app upgrade with a stale venv (#307).** Dependencies are now synced on upgrade, and a structurally broken venv self-heals instead of exiting `106`. `scalar_fastapi` is now optional so its absence can't break startup. (#307, #314)
- **`/generate` ignored the selected TTS engine (#312)** and GGUF speech-control parameters weren't forwarded — both now honored. (#306, #312)
- **TTS generation failed on some GPUs.** `torch.compile` failures now fall back to eager execution so generation never hard-fails on unsupported GPUs, and cudagraph-compiled inference is pinned to one dedicated thread to avoid crashes. (#278, #315)
- **Re-dub ignored transcript edits (#281).** Fingerprints are canonicalized, the preview cache is busted, and the mux is atomic, so editing the transcript and re-dubbing actually reflects your changes. Translated subtitles now burn in correctly and subtitle save no longer throws a JSON error. (#281, #309)
- **macOS: app wouldn't open without using Terminal.** Builds are now ad-hoc signed (with signing/notarization verification), so the app launches normally. (#290)
- **macOS dictation auto-paste stole focus**; it now writes the clipboard natively without grabbing focus, and microphone-permission handling adds OS usage descriptions, a WebView grant handler, and an actionable denied-state UI. (#287, #323)
- **Clone-reference transcription was broken** (it used a removed transformers pipeline); it now routes through the ASR registry. A crash-isolated faster-whisper subprocess backend keeps an ASR crash from taking down the app. (#308, #393)
- **Realtime status probe hit a gated route.** It now probes the auth-exempt `/health` instead of the gated `/model/status`, and the UI polls the backend over HTTP before opening the WebSocket to avoid startup `ECONNREFUSED`. (#439, #450)
- **Non-executable or unreachable engine binaries showed cryptic errors** — these now produce actionable messages. (#437, #438, #454, #466)
- **Design-profile save was coupled to a TTS render (#476)**, so saving a profile needlessly triggered synthesis; the two are now decoupled. (#476)
- **UI scale / black bands.** The app shell now scales via `transform: scale` and always fills the viewport, fixing the WebKitGTK black-band issue on Linux and cramped/black layouts at narrow widths — a permanent fix across platforms. (#445, #452)
- **Clone popover/CTA clipping and a non-resizable textarea** are fixed, the WaveformPlayer no longer pauses itself on play or ignores clicks, and several layout/history-display issues (phantom sidebar gap, title clamping, flicker) are cleaned up. (#379, #384, #398, #481)
- **Windows: `desktop-prod` now runs from cmd/PowerShell** via a cross-platform launcher, `tqdm` is disabled on non-TTY to avoid an `OSError`, and ffmpeg validation guards against `WinError 193`. (#282, #305, #377)
- **MLX import hardened** against PyInstaller dylib failures, with a proper platform gate so it's only loaded where it works. (#390)

### Changed

- **Restricted-network support.** A Hugging Face mirror (`HF_ENDPOINT`) setting, custom PyPI / HF / python-build-standalone mirrors in first-run setup, and region presets help installs complete behind restrictive networks. (#286, #391)
- **Engine memory management.** Subprocess-engine sidecars now unload on demand and idle-reap to free VRAM. (#401, #406)
- **Faster, more accurate model downloads** via a Xet fast path with accurate progress reporting, plus a model-management cleanup pass. (#424, #428)
- **Voice profiles unified** under one model with a `kind` discriminator and stored design params, and consent-locked profiles (`verified_own_voice` + spoken-consent flow). (#354, #376)
- **Updater** preview channel now offers the newest build across channels, and preview versions carry an MSI-legal numeric pre-release stamp. (#293, #326)
- **Performance.** Voice-clone prompt embeddings are cached, and dub retime batches seek to their window instead of decoding from frame 0. (#387, #427)

### License

- **Relicensed from FSL-1.1-ALv2 to AGPL-3.0 (open-core).** The project is now under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, with a paid commercial license retained for proprietary/closed-source use without AGPL obligations. The bundled `omnivoice/` TTS model package stays Apache-2.0 upstream (AGPL-compatible). Manifests declare `AGPL-3.0-only`; the in-app Commercial License copy and README are updated, and the old "converts to Apache 2.0 after two years" FAQ is removed. In-app commercial-license strings are translated across all 20 locales. (#292)

### CI

- **macOS Intel (x86_64) build target reinstated** on `macos-15-intel`, so Intel Mac users get installers again. (#342)
- **Docker Hub publishing.** Images now also publish to Docker Hub (`palashdeb/omnivoice-studio`), with the Docker Hub overview maintained in-repo and auto-synced from `main` (sync is non-fatal so it can't redden a build). (#375, #410, #414)
- **Docs-drift guard.** A daily job compares the canonical feature inventory against README / docs / registries to catch stale docs. (#353)
- **Security scans never cancel on `main`,** so merge trains no longer leave red ✗ on intermediate commits. (#340)

---

## Downloads & checksums

### Linux x64 artifacts

```
34fc42364f95662b7b1c7164db79531ea0b7cc265be2cca7bba4f85b54ee674c  OmniVoice Studio_0.3.6_amd64.AppImage
f898611f9f899d3b9f5f5d08eee303e25aa32902d647e05788b239a5d0fc6ae5  OmniVoice Studio_0.3.6_amd64.AppImage.sig
```


### Windows x64 artifacts

```
f7761bb556cea145f5f0d38ff24547dc1e20ece508b445f65e4802356ceb6557 *OmniVoice Studio_0.3.6_x64_en-US.msi
ba7720a2f31ece91ba6cd615631807768b0ff6cc7b96e3381c3efe4fd17d0302 *OmniVoice Studio_0.3.6_x64_en-US.msi.sig
```


### macOS Intel artifacts

```
51fb4137b500f34a17940a541fa242d48e80cfd5dc89a051dcf41bcec002c923  OmniVoice Studio_0.3.6_x64.dmg
4bd0acfa9e11fada2410d4df1ea306cd222404b36aff4ce63abed9fb12b5fae0  OmniVoice Studio.app.tar.gz
6b007592d7fa24a639f3811dc16e276b0f69cf554708f9f7140c566053451f6b  OmniVoice Studio.app.tar.gz.sig
```