PeakVox is a Universal Voice Runtime. This document states why it is built the way it is — the beliefs that shape the architecture, the licensing, and the community.
For what PeakVox is, start at the README. For how decisions get made, see GOVERNANCE.md. For who we want to be, see COMMUNITY_VALUES.md.
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Open models matter. The most important advances in speech are increasingly open. A platform that locks itself to one proprietary model inherits that model's limits, pricing, and politics. PeakVox is model-agnostic on purpose, so the ecosystem — not a vendor — decides which models matter.
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Open ecosystems matter. Voices, integrations, and workflows should not be hostage to a single provider. The same
public_voice_idworks across every model, forever. You integrate once; you are never re-platformed by a model change. -
Voice technology should remain accessible. Self-hosting is a first-class path, not a downgraded one. Community Edition is genuinely useful on its own hardware — including CPU-capable runtimes — so capability does not require a credit card or a cloud account.
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Infrastructure should not be locked behind proprietary systems. The runtime, the model registry, the voice library, the generation pipeline, and the public API are all in the open. The parts reserved for Cloud (marketplace, creators, billing, multi-tenant auth) are clearly bounded, schema-ready, and disabled in CE — never a hidden fork.
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The platform should remain extensible and transparent. Adding a runtime or a model family is a documented, ADR-driven process — never a privileged, closed integration. Capabilities are declared, not inferred. Decisions are written down.
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A voice belongs to its owner, not to a model. This is both a technical invariant and an ethical stance. People should own their voice identity, carry it across engines, and use it under clear, consent-based rules (see the Voice Usage Policy).
These beliefs are not aspirational — they are enforced by the Constitution and the ADRs:
| Belief | Where it is enforced |
|---|---|
| Never architected around one model | Constitution Art. I–II; ADR-0002, ADR-0004 |
| Voices are portable, model-independent assets | ADR-0001 Voice/Variant split |
| Capabilities declared, not inferred | ADR-0003 |
| One stable entry point for generation | Runtime architecture |
| Models are installable runtimes, not bespoke builds | ADR-0016, ADR-0018 |
| Open-core boundary is honest and bounded | Constitution Art. V; Product Architecture |
| Code is proof; documentation is intent | Constitution Art. VII |
PeakVox is source-available, not a traditional permissive open-source license. The code is readable, modifiable, and self-hostable under the Community License (based on the Elastic License 2.0). What it prohibits is narrow and specific: reselling PeakVox as a competing managed/SaaS offering. Everything a self-hoster, developer, researcher, or business wants to do internally is permitted, free of charge.
We chose open core — rather than fully permissive — so the project can be sustainable without fragmenting the ecosystem or paywalling the infrastructure. We chose source-available — rather than closed — because transparency and self-hosting are non-negotiable to us. The bundled model runtimes keep their own upstream licenses; PeakVox does not restrict them (see NOTICE).
If the boundary ever needs to move, it moves in the open, through a superseding decision — never silently.
Architecture lives in docs/.agents/: a vision, a constitution,
ADRs, an architecture suite, a roadmap, and honest validation reports that separate "the
platform can orchestrate this" from "a real model runs this end-to-end." The intent is that a
newcomer can understand the project — and disagree with it — from the documents alone.
Related: README.md · GOVERNANCE.md · COMMUNITY_VALUES.md · CONTRIBUTING.md · Vision · Constitution