| --- |
| title: Small Talk |
| emoji: 🎙️ |
| colorFrom: indigo |
| colorTo: green |
| sdk: gradio |
| sdk_version: 6.17.3 |
| app_file: app.py |
| pinned: true |
| short_description: An AI-to-AI robot podcast hosted by Reachy Minis |
| tags: |
| - reachy_mini |
| - livekit |
| - webrtc |
| - three.js |
| - track:wood |
| - sponsor:nvidia |
| - sponsor:modal |
| - achievement:offbrand |
| - achievement:llama |
| - achievement:fieldnotes |
| - achievement:offgrid |
| - badge-tiny-titan |
| --- |
| |
| # Small Talk |
|
|
| An AI-to-AI podcast hosted by Reachy Mini robots. They join a live WebRTC call, |
| each with its own personality and voice, and talk it out while you watch a |
| Meet-style grid of their 3D digital twins moving in sync with the conversation. |
| Give them a topic and they write the script, design their own voices, dress |
| themselves, and go live. Own a Reachy Mini? It can join a show as a real cast |
| member and speak its lines through the actual robot. |
|
|
| **Team:** [GauravGosain](https://huggingface.co/GauravGosain) and [nkapila6](https://huggingface.co/nkapila6). |
|
|
| - **Demo video:** https://youtu.be/obP4C1eH77I |
| - **Build write-ups:** [Small Talk on the Hugging Face blog](https://huggingface.co/blog/build-small-hackathon/small-talk) · [nkapila.me](https://nkapila.me/posts/small-talk) |
| - **Launch posts:** [@_GauravGosain on X](https://x.com/_GauravGosain/status/2066013749304344915) · [Nikhil Kapila on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nikhilkapila_buildsmall-huggingface-modal-ugcPost-7471791298199408640-OBzS/) |
|
|
| ## What you can do |
|
|
| - **Watch a live generated show.** Pick a topic. One structured Nemotron call |
| writes the cast and the full speaker-to-dialogue script, Qwen3-TTS voices each |
| line, and the next line renders while the current one plays. Subtitles, a |
| pre-show "writers' room", and rolling continuations keep it going. |
| - **Set the cast.** A slider picks 2 to 5 hosts, or how many simulated co-hosts |
| fill in around your physical robots. |
| - **Design a robot.** Choose a name, personality, voice, shell colour, and props. |
| The same Nemotron brain styles its wardrobe from your description. |
| - **Tune into Reachy FM.** A radio station of AI-written songs with synced |
| karaoke lyrics, a spinning vinyl deck, an audio-reactive visualizer, and a DJ |
| robot in headphones that does mic breaks and bops to the beat. |
| - **Bring your own Reachy.** A single Go binary turns a physical Reachy Mini into |
| a cast member that speaks its own lines, head and antennas moving with the |
| speech. |
|
|
| ## How it is built |
|
|
| The whole app is served by `gradio.Server`, a FastAPI host with Gradio's backend |
| where custom routes take priority, so the visitor only ever sees a hand-built |
| three.js frontend. There is no default Gradio component anywhere in the product. |
|
|
| ```mermaid |
| flowchart LR |
| topic([Topic]) --> llm["NVIDIA Nemotron 4B<br/>llama.cpp on Modal"] |
| llm -->|one structured call| script[["Cast plus script<br/>(JSON)"]] |
| script --> tts["Qwen3-TTS<br/>on Modal"] |
| tts -->|"line N+1 renders<br/>while line N plays"| pub[ReachyPublisher] |
| pub --> sfu{{"LiveKit SFU<br/>(WebRTC)"}} |
| sfu --> web["Browser:<br/>3D twins + subtitles"] |
| sfu --> robot["Physical Reachy<br/>(Go companion)"] |
| ``` |
|
|
| - **Brain.** NVIDIA Nemotron Nano (4B) served through llama.cpp on Modal. A single |
| constrained, structured call returns the full cast and script as JSON. We found |
| constrained structured output far more reliable than chaining calls. |
| - **Voice.** Qwen3-TTS VoiceDesign on Modal, one consistent character voice per |
| host, generated as a cascade so there is no dead air between lines. |
| - **Realtime.** A self-hosted LiveKit SFU carries the audio over WebRTC. Subtitles |
| and show status ride LiveKit data messages. |
| - **Twins.** The official Reachy Mini URDF and meshes in three.js, with head and |
| antenna motion blending a speech-reactive envelope and the real recorded Reachy |
| emotions and dances. |
|
|
| The Space itself runs CPU-only. All inference is delegated to Modal serverless GPUs. |
| The Modal serving code for the Nemotron (llama.cpp) and Qwen3-TTS endpoints lives in |
| [nkapila6/llama-modal-serve](https://github.com/nkapila6/llama-modal-serve). |
|
|
| ## Built for the Build Small Hackathon |
|
|
| Everything runs on models well under the 32B cap, and most of the work is done by |
| a single 4B model. Small Talk is in the running for: |
|
|
| | Category | Why it qualifies | |
| |---|---| |
| | **Thousand Token Wood** | A whimsical, AI-native entertainment platform. | |
| | **NVIDIA** | The brain is NVIDIA Nemotron. | |
| | **Modal** | The LLM and the TTS both run on Modal at runtime. | |
| | **Off Brand** | A fully custom three.js UI built on `gradio.Server`. | |
| | **Tiny Titan** | The reasoning brain is a 4B model. | |
| | **Llama Champion** | Nemotron is served through the llama.cpp runtime. | |
| | **Off the Grid** | No proprietary or closed model APIs. Every model (Nemotron, Qwen3-TTS) is open-weight and self-hosted via llama.cpp; Modal provides the compute, not the model. | |
| | **Field Notes** | A full build write-up is published on the HF blog. | |
| | **Bonus Quest Champion** | The most bonus criteria met across the board. | |
|
|
| If you enjoy it, an upvote helps with Community Choice. |
|
|
| Source: [github.com/Gaurav-Gosain/small-talk](https://github.com/Gaurav-Gosain/small-talk) |
|
|
