Lessons Learned

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A Kokoro-made reference makes Chatterbox clones flat with odd pauses. Use a real human reference (the user's recording worked well; leave more headroom, it peaked at -0.1 dBFS).
Generate one sentence at a time (best of several seeds, ~200 ms gaps) to avoid strange pauses.
Copywriting: short spoken sentences, numbers written as spoken words, ~105 words per 45 s, leave ~2 s spare. Number-heavy long lines made Prop 1 sound awkward.
Gemini reads directions aloud unless they go in the style field.
Music must add feel: civic_tension and piano B were rejected; option A (dark low strings, slow heartbeat pulse) chosen for Prop 1. If code-composed music misses twice, use a richer generator.
ElevenLabs free tier was blocked for TTS ("unusual activity"); not retried.
HyperFrames is easier for local models than Remotion (plain HTML per scene).
Pick an authoritative male voice for political ads.