Phone line

Pepper can answer calls through a spare Android phone plugged into the Mac. The Android bridge is that phone plus a small call server on the Mac. The phone signs in to the server, and Pepper talks through it. When you call, you hear Pepper's voice, and saying your passphrase lets you ask questions and add tasks, as you would in Telegram. Outgoing calls are planned, and Pepper won't place one without your OK.

Setup guides:

• Giving Pepper a phone line: the options, and why the Android bridge is the default.
• Android bridge: the phone, the call server, and pairing them.
• Calling Pepper: your number, your contacts, and your passphrase.

Once the bridge is set up, turn it on with PEPPER_PHONE=on in .env, restart Pepper, then run scripts/phone/pepper-phone.sh on.

• The line and call-server passwords: ~/pepper-phone/secrets.env, made by the bridge setup.
• Your passphrase: data/phone/passphrase, which holds only a hash of it, a scrambled form that can't be turned back into the phrase. Change it with npm run phone -- passphrase.

Your passphrase is checked on the Mac and never leaves it. The rest of what is said on a call may be transcribed by OpenAI if you set that up for speech-to-text, and messages callers leave reach you on Telegram.

The dashboard's Connections page shows the line as ok once Pepper is listening for calls, and after each call that ends normally. It doesn't confirm that the phone and the bridge are up. When a call goes wrong part-way, Pepper notes what went wrong and tells you on Telegram. If the line doesn't seem to be working, run scripts/phone/pepper-phone.sh status, which checks the phone, the bridge and the call server in turn.