Feature Request: Add MiniMax Speech as an alternative voice provider

[iam-zekai]

Summary

Currently HAPI's voice assistant only supports ElevenLabs Conversational AI as the voice provider. It would be great to add MiniMax Speech as an alternative option.

Why MiniMax?

• MiniMax Speech-02 has topped global voice evaluation benchmarks, outperforming both OpenAI and ElevenLabs (source)
• Chinese voice quality is significantly better — character error rate of 2.25% vs ElevenLabs' 16%
• Cost: ~1/4 of ElevenLabs pricing
• Low latency: Speech 2.6 achieves <250ms end-to-end, comparable to ElevenLabs
• Features: 300+ system voices, voice cloning from 5-second samples, 40+ languages, emotional control
• MiniMax is already widely adopted by platforms like LiveKit, Vapi, and Pipecat

Proposed Change

Add MiniMax as a configurable voice provider alongside ElevenLabs, e.g.:

export MINIMAX_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export HAPI_VOICE_PROVIDER="minimax"  # default: "elevenlabs"
hapi hub --relay

Context

For users in China or those working primarily in Chinese, MiniMax provides a much better experience and is more cost-effective. Having provider choice would make HAPI more accessible globally.

References

• MiniMax Speech API Docs
• MiniMax MCP Implementation
• MiniMax Speech 2.6 Announcement

[github-actions]

Thanks for the request. Current voice assistant: ElevenLabs only; no provider switch or MiniMax integration found. Hub voice token endpoint calls ElevenLabs ConvAI with ELEVENLABS_* env vars; web realtime client uses @elevenlabs/react; shared voice config explicitly ElevenLabs. HAPI_VOICE_PROVIDER/MINIMAX env vars not found in repo.

Relevant code:

• hub/src/web/routes/voice.ts:130 - reads ELEVENLABS_API_KEY and uses ElevenLabs token flow.
• shared/src/voice.ts:1 - shared voice config for ElevenLabs ConvAI.
• web/src/realtime/RealtimeVoiceSession.tsx:2 - realtime client uses @elevenlabs/react.

Need more info:

• Which MiniMax API mode to support (streaming/WebRTC vs REST TTS)?
• Should hub store the MiniMax API key and proxy tokens like ElevenLabs?

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HAPI Bot