Building a Local Voice AI Assistant with SwiftUI and CSM-1B on Apple Silicon

A developer shared their side project mobiGlas, a SwiftUI app that turns an OpenClaw AI assistant into a hands-free voice companion. The app runs entirely on Apple Silicon with local speech-to-text, local LLM, and local voice cloning using CSM-1B — no cloud dependencies.

Key Details

• Trigger: Say "Hey Skippy" into AirPods to start a conversation.
• Voice: Uses CSM-1B voice cloning model running locally on an M2 Ultra. Generates ~15 seconds of audio in about 7 seconds.
• Stack:
  • OpenClaw — AI assistant framework running on Mac
  • mobiGlas — SwiftUI app with real-time speech-to-text and text-to-speech
  • CSM-1B — Local voice cloning model
  • AirPods — hands-free audio I/O
• Status: v0.1 (described as "janky but functional"). The feel of walking around having a conversation with AI is reportedly "genuinely wild."
• Voice example: The developer cloned the voice of R.C. Bray (narrator of Expeditionary Force) as the assistant "Skippy."

Next Steps

The developer plans to smooth the experience for daily use cases like news briefings, reminders, and talking through ideas out loud.

If you're experimenting with local voice AI on Apple Silicon, the developer is looking to compare notes.