feat(voice): local-only LLM + faster turns

Gateway: drop the remote ailiance fallback — the NPC LLM is now the
on-box granite ONLY (local spoken line on failure, never remote).
Prewarm the persona KV-cache in the background at greeting time so the
first reply is fast instead of paying ~17 s of cold prompt processing.
Add temperature + repetition_penalty so granite4-tiny stops looping.
STT: cut the trailing-silence pad 2 s -> 0.5 s (callers already pad),
shaving STT latency. Bump ESP32_ZACUS to cfe429d (hook debounce).

tools/kyutai-stt/kyutai_stt_server.py

@@ -110,8 +110,11 @@ def _run_inference(wav_path: str) -> str:
     global _audio_tokenizer
 
     audio, _ = sphn.read(wav_path, sample_rate=24000)
-    # Pad with 2 s of silence so the model can flush its final tokens
+    # Pad with 0.5 s of silence so the model can flush its final tokens. Callers
-    audio = np.concatenate([audio, np.zeros((1, 48000), dtype=audio.dtype)], axis=-1)
+    # (the gateway) already append ~0.8 s of trailing silence, so a short pad here
+    # is enough to flush — and every padded second costs ~1.5x realtime of STT
+    # latency, which dominates the conversation turn time.
+    audio = np.concatenate([audio, np.zeros((1, 12000), dtype=audio.dtype)], axis=-1)
     audio_mx = mx.array(audio)
 
     with _lock:

tools/zacus-gateway/main.py

@@ -224,7 +224,16 @@ async def _chat_one(http: httpx.AsyncClient, url: str, model: str,
     """One OpenAI-compatible chat call. Raises on transport/HTTP/shape error."""
     resp = await http.post(
         f"{url.rstrip('/')}/v1/chat/completions",
-        json={"model": model, "messages": messages, "max_tokens": 48},
+        json={
+            "model": model,
+            "messages": messages,
+            "max_tokens": 48,
+            # granite4-tiny loops ("parlez par-dessus, parlez par-dessous…")
+            # without a repetition penalty; a little temperature + penalty keep
+            # the one-sentence phone reply varied and on-track.
+            "temperature": 0.7,
+            "repetition_penalty": 1.3,
+        },
         timeout=timeout,
     )
     if resp.status_code != 200:
@@ -235,20 +244,17 @@ async def _chat_one(http: httpx.AsyncClient, url: str, model: str,
 async def _chat_reply(http: httpx.AsyncClient, persona: str, history: list[dict]) -> str:
     """Produce the NPC reply text from the persona + conversation history.
 
-    Primary backend is the LOCAL vllm-mlx LLM on this Mac M1 (native FR, fast,
+    LOCAL-ONLY (user requirement): the only LLM is the on-box vllm-mlx granite.
-    no remote dependency); ailiance is a remote fallback if the local server is
+    There is NO remote fallback — if granite fails, we return a LOCAL spoken
-    down. If both fail, return a spoken fallback so the voice loop never hangs.
+    line so the voice loop never hangs, but we never leave this Mac.
     """
     messages = [{"role": "system", "content": persona + _PHONE_STYLE}] + history
     backends = [
-        # 8 s: a healthy warm granite answers in ~2 s, so 8 s gives margin while
+        # Local granite only. Generous timeout: granite answers in ~0.4 s idle
-        # failing over FAST when the local server is cold, hung, or deadlocked.
+        # but is slowed by Metal contention with the on-box Kyutai STT during a
-        # Waiting the full cold-load (~47 s) here would blow the turn budget —
+        # turn, so allow it to finish rather than giving up early. On a true hang
-        # the player hears only the filler and the reply never lands in time.
+        # we fall back to a LOCAL spoken line (never a remote backend).
-        # The keep-warm task is responsible for keeping granite warm; if it is
+        ("local", settings.local_chat_url, settings.local_chat_model, 15.0),
-        # unreachable we want the remote fallback immediately, not a 70 s stall.
-        ("local", settings.local_chat_url, settings.local_chat_model, 8.0),
-        ("ailiance", settings.ailiance_tts_url, settings.ailiance_chat_model, 12.0),
     ]
     last_exc: Exception | None = None
     for name, url, model, timeout in backends:
@@ -256,11 +262,29 @@ async def _chat_reply(http: httpx.AsyncClient, persona: str, history: list[dict]
             return await _chat_one(http, url, model, messages, timeout)
         except Exception as exc:  # noqa: BLE001 — try the next backend on any failure
             last_exc = exc
-            logging.warning("LLM backend %s failed (%s) — next", name, type(exc).__name__)
+            logging.warning("LLM backend %s failed (%s) — local spoken fallback", name, type(exc).__name__)
-    logging.error("all LLM backends unreachable (%s) — spoken fallback", last_exc)
+    logging.error("local LLM unreachable (%s) — local spoken fallback", last_exc)
     return _CHAT_FALLBACK
 
 
+async def _warm_persona(http: httpx.AsyncClient, persona: str) -> None:
+    """Prime granite's KV cache with this persona's system-prompt prefix.
+
+    The first granite call for a persona pays ~15-17 s of prompt processing
+    (511-char system prompt, slow on the M1 while the Kyutai STT shares Metal);
+    later calls reuse the cached prefix in ~0.5 s. Fired in the background at
+    greeting time so the player's FIRST reply already hits a warm cache instead
+    of timing out. Best-effort: errors are swallowed.
+    """
+    try:
+        messages = [{"role": "system", "content": persona + _PHONE_STYLE},
+                    {"role": "user", "content": "Allô ?"}]
+        await _chat_one(http, settings.local_chat_url, settings.local_chat_model, messages, 30.0)
+        logging.info("LLM persona prewarm done")
+    except Exception as exc:  # noqa: BLE001
+        logging.warning("LLM persona prewarm failed (%s)", type(exc).__name__)
+
+
 @asynccontextmanager
 async def lifespan(app: FastAPI) -> AsyncIterator[None]:
     # Surface our own INFO logs (HEARD/SAID transcriptions, prewarm) — uvicorn
@@ -2011,6 +2035,10 @@ async def voice_turn(body: VoiceTurnRequest, request: Request, _: None = Depends
     try:
         if body.kind == "greeting":
             said = entry.get("greeting") or await _chat_reply(http, persona, [])
+            # Prime granite's KV cache with this persona NOW (background), so the
+            # player's first spoken reply hits a warm cache (~0.5 s) instead of
+            # the ~17 s cold prompt-processing that was timing out.
+            asyncio.create_task(_warm_persona(http, persona))
         else:
             # Text-only reply (no audio input — heard is always empty here).
             # The transcription-driven path lives in POST /v1/voice/reply.