Cline Text to Speech: Add Clonylab and Generate Voice-Overs

Cline is an open-source coding agent that lives inside your editor. It plans, edits files, runs commands and asks for your approval at each step. With MCP it can also use outside tools. Add Clonylab as a server and Cline can turn a script into a voice-over, then save the MP3 where you tell it.

Cline is built around approvals. That fits a tool that can start voice-overs and delete History items. You decide which Clonylab tools run on their own and which ones wait for your click. This guide shows how to set that up well.

Clonylab gives Cline 14 tools for voices, speech jobs, History, Studio settings and usage. Our guide to the text to speech MCP server explains each one. This page covers the Cline side: the settings file, the one field you must not forget, and a sensible auto-approve list.

Cline’s documentation says to set "type": "streamableHttp" explicitly. If you leave it out, Cline falls back to the older SSE style. Clonylab’s server speaks Streamable HTTP, so an entry without the type line will not connect. If a server shows an error right after you add it, check this line first.

When you use the Cline command-line tool, the same settings live in ~/.cline/data/settings/cline_mcp_settings.json. You can move that file by setting the CLINE_MCP_SETTINGS_PATH environment variable. The editor extensions use the file that the Configure button opens.

autoApprove is a list of tool names that run without your click. Cline’s documentation advises keeping it to safe tools. For Clonylab, that means the read-only tools. They only look at things.

"autoApprove": ["connection_status", "list_voices", "list_cloned_voices", "get_job", "usage_summary"]

Cline’s approval step is the main reason to like it for this job. Each Clonylab call shows up as a request you can read before you accept. For the first week, approve every generate_speech call by hand and look at three things.

• The text. Is it what you want spoken, with nothing private in it?
• The voice. Did Cline pick the voice you named, or a default?
• The tags. Are the pauses where you expect them?

Once your prompts are steady, you can move generate_speech into autoApprove and keep deletes and settings changes on approval. If you want to pause Clonylab without losing the entry, set "disabled": true. The server stays in the file and Cline stops loading it. Switch it back to false when you need it.

Cline works in the editor and also as a command-line tool. Both can use Clonylab, and both read the same kind of block. The command-line tool keeps its settings in its own file, which we named above, so remember to add Clonylab in each place you use Cline.

If a token leaks, delete it on the Connector screen. Cline loses access at once, and you can make a new token in a few seconds.

Cline sends your request to the model you chose, and that model decides when to call a tool. A smaller model may need clearer instructions, such as naming the tool or the voice. If a call fails once, ask Cline to read the error and try again. Most failures come from a closed Clonylab tab, and the error text says so in plain words.

The Studio stays the best place for one clip that you want to hear and tune by ear. Cline fits when a voice-over comes out of a bigger task in your editor. If you use another agent too, see our guides for Windsurf and AI agents. The AI voiceover generator page lists every script tag.