Questions, answered.

A gaming PC or gaming laptop with a 6 GB NVIDIA GPU gets you started, and 8 GB is the sweet spot — that's the benchmarked path, generating at roughly real-time. Apple-silicon Macs are supported too: the engines run on the Mac's GPU (or CPU), just slower. No GPU at all works, but it's slow enough that we'd call it a fallback, not a plan. AMD GPUs are an experimental preview: Qwen and Coqui run on ROCm and Kokoro on the CPU, with an automatic CPU fallback if the ROCm install doesn't take — a ROCm-supported card and a recent driver are needed. Analysis — the character-detection step — runs on a local CPU model or the free Gemini tier either way, so the GPU stays free for speech.

Two ways, both free. One click: if you use Pinokio, paste the Castwright repo URL, click Install, then Start — Pinokio brings its own Python and tools, so there's no terminal and nothing to set up. Or direct: download the zip from the download page, unzip it, and run the launcher; one build runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Either way the first launch sets up your voices. See /docs/install for the full walkthrough.

Yes. Your books, voices, and library stay on your machine, and synthesis runs entirely locally once models are installed — the generated audio never leaves the house. Working out who speaks each line reads your book locally too, by default. There is an optional cloud analyser (Gemini free tier) that sends chapter text: if you have set a cloud key, it steps in when the local model isn't running. One setting stops it doing that, for good.

For personal use of books you already own, format-shifting for accessibility is generally accepted in most jurisdictions. Castwright is a personal-use tool — it is not designed or intended for redistribution of audiobook copies. Respect copyright and the terms of your ebook purchase; we say so plainly rather than burying it.

Import: EPUB, PDF, or paste plain text directly. Export: M4B (chapter-marked audiobook, works in every major player), MP3 (flat audio, maximum compatibility), and SRT or VTT captions — line, sentence, or word level, for the whole book or a single chapter, handy for a demo clip or reading along. Your files land on your drive — no upload required.

Yes, two ways. Today, free: export M4B or MP3 and drop it into any player you like. At launch, the companion app (iOS and Android) joins the Cast Pass — pair with a QR code, sync your library over your own Wi-Fi, download books, and listen offline with chapters, speed control, and your place kept in sync.

Source-available, not OSI open source, and we say so plainly. The code is public on GitHub, under the Functional Source License (FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0): fully readable, forkable for personal use, and it converts to Apache-2.0 two years after each release. Competing redistribution is barred during that window. See /legal/licensing for the full picture.

Yes, once models are installed. Generation and playback are fully offline — nothing phones home during synthesis — and character detection runs on a local model by default. The optional cloud analyser is the one part that wants a connection; switch it off, or keep the local model running, and the whole pipeline runs without internet access.

Nothing, during the public beta: it's free for every book — the full cast, series memory included, yours to keep. At launch, the Cast Pass — seven dollars, once — unlocks the cross-book series memory and the companion app. No subscription, no metering. Free buys you a perfect book; the Cast Pass gives your library a memory. See /pricing for the breakdown.

Yes — voice cloning is coming in the next release. You record a short consent clip, it stays on your machine, and Castwright can narrate in your voice. The cloned voice is never uploaded or shared. Your consent recording is yours to keep or delete.

Each has its place. Cloud voice services like ElevenLabs, Play.ht, and Speechify are capable and convenient, but they run in the cloud on a subscription or metered quota; Castwright runs on your own machine and is free, with a one-time seven-dollar Cast Pass at launch. Audible and other narrated catalogues give you professional human narration for the titles they carry; Castwright turns the books you already own into a full-cast performance, every character in their own voice. Open-source text-to-speech projects are free and local too, and several now cast a book on their own. What Castwright adds is depth, not novelty: a cast chosen by two models working together, series memory that holds a character's voice steady from book to book — which no open-source tool does — and a quality gate that checks every line, verifies it against the transcript, and re-records the ones that break. If you want a private, local, full-cast audiobook maker for your own library, that is where Castwright fits.