Plugins can play sounds and speak, within per-session budgets / Claude Code v2.1.242

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Plugins Notable

Plugins can play sounds and speak aloud, capped per session, on macOS and browser hosts only.

What

Plugins get two new calls, $.audio.play and $.audio.speak. Playback works only where there is a player: a browser host, or macOS via afplay for clips and say for speech. On Linux and Windows terminals playing a clip does nothing and speaking is rejected. Each plugin has a cap on total plays per session and on concurrent plays.

Details

A clip is exactly one of asset (a path inside the plugin's own directory), url (fetched through the same URL safety check used elsewhere), or base64 plus mime. There is a byte cap on the clip.
loop is optional and requires a signal to stop it. gain is clamped to a maximum.
Speech prefers the browser speechSynthesis API when present, then macOS say.

Evidence

$.audio.play: clip must be { asset }, { url } or { base64, mime }

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.