ReTold

Every book, retold for your ears. ReTold turns a plain-text novel into a listening-optimized audiobook – distinct character voices, ambient scene-setting, "till now…" recaps, a world-building intro, and (conservatively) real sound effects in place of throwaway sound-describing sentences.

Demo

▶️ Watch the full demo on Google Drive (opens in a new tab)

🔊 Listen to a sample of rendered engine output

Architecture

Level	Diagram
L1 – core loop (Book → IR → audio)
L2 – retold engine internals
L3 – spoiler-safe assistant

Editable .svg sources: demo/architecture/.

Components

• retold_engine/ – the per-chapter audiobook generator. Everything centers on the IR (retold/schema.py): Book → Chapter → Scene → Segment.
• talking_system/ – the spoiler-safe "narrator" assistant.
• server/ – a thin FastAPI layer that turns the two into a runnable app with a browser UI.

Media assets

All showcase assets (video, architecture images, sample audio) live in media/ – see media/README.md.

Quick start (offline – no API key)

pip install numpy pydantic pyyaml          # ffmpeg must be on PATH for MP3/M4B
python -m retold.pipeline samples/mad_tea_party.txt --offline

See retold_engine/README.md for full engine docs and server/README.md for running the app server.