Ideas for products that listen better.
Practical notes on speech assessment, voice agents, learning design, and the work behind reliable production integrations.
Practical notes on speech assessment, voice agents, learning design, and the work behind reliable production integrations—from structured speech evidence to tutor loops and launch checklists.
FeaturedChivox AI vs SpeechSuper vs Speechace vs Azure Pronunciation Assessment
An EdTech-focused comparison of four pronunciation platforms—and how to choose by product job, not feature count.
Latest articles
How to add pronunciation scoring to your voice agent with MCP
Connect a voice agent to a Pronunciation Assessment MCP so LLMs can coach from structured speech evidence—not guessed scores.
Mandarin tone assessment: why it is hard—and how modern AI makes it possible
Tone carries meaning in Mandarin. That is why ASR is not enough—and why dedicated pitch-aware assessment matters for Chinese learning products.
Why every AI language tutor needs a Pronunciation Assessment MCP
LLMs can converse, but they cannot objectively score pronunciation. An MCP-backed assessment engine makes speaking feedback measurable.
Grounding voice agents with structured speech evidence
Why a transcript alone is not enough—and how phoneme, fluency, and audio-quality signals create better agent decisions.
A production checklist for speech assessment APIs
Keys, limits, privacy, observability, and fallback behavior to settle before real learners arrive.
Mandarin tone feedback that learners can actually use
Turn tone and Pinyin evidence into one focused retry instead of a wall of corrections.
Building a grounded AI language tutor loop
A practical pattern for moving from learner audio to explanation, targeted practice, and a measurable retry.
Function calling for predictable speech tools
How typed inputs and inspectable outputs make speech capabilities easier to place inside an agent workflow.
Seven questions to answer before adding speech assessment
A short alignment guide for product, curriculum, engineering, and procurement teams.