docs/LOCAL_TESTING.md

Local Testing Guide

Quick Test (Recommended)

Test just the audio generation:

# Activate virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate

# Run quick test
python quick_test.py

This will generate a short audio sample to verify Kokoro-82M TTS works.

Full Gradio App

To run the complete app locally:

# Activate virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate

# Set environment variables (or create .env file)
export HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN=your_token_here
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_anthropic_key_here
export SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API=your_scholar_key_here  # Optional

# Run the app
python app.py

Then open your browser to http://localhost:7860

What to Test

1. Audio Generation - Run quick_test.py to verify Kokoro-82M works
2. Paper Search - Enter a topic like "AlphaFold" or "CRISPR"
3. Full Workflow - Generate a complete podcast from a research paper
4. UI/UX - Check that all tabs display correctly
5. Error Handling - Try invalid inputs to see error messages

Expected Output

• Audio files saved to assets/audio/
• WAV format (Kokoro-82M native format)
• File sizes ~900KB-1MB per minute of audio
• Quality Much better than gTTS, similar to commercial TTS

Troubleshooting

"No module named 'huggingface_hub'"

pip install huggingface-hub

"HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN not set"

Make sure you've exported the environment variable or created a .env file.

"Port 7860 already in use"

GRADIO_SERVER_PORT=7861 python app.py

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Internet connection (for API calls)
• Hugging Face token (free at https://huggingface.co/settings/tokens)
• Anthropic API key (for Claude AI)