Add WebSocket (JSON and non-JSON) support to the Rime TTS LiveKit plugin with client-side protocol switching.

[gokuljs]

Feature Type

Would make my life easier

Feature Description

Description:

Hey LiveKit team 👋,

I am planning to improve and extend the livekit-rime-plugin to support additional Rime transport protocols.

Current state

At the moment, the Rime plugin supports:

• Rime TTS over HTTP

Rime itself supports additional protocols:

• WebSocket (JSON)
• WebSocket (non-JSON / binary)

Goal

I would like to extend the existing Rime LiveKit plugin so it can support:

• HTTP
• WebSocket (JSON)
• WebSocket (non-JSON)

Design question

Before starting implementation, I wanted to get feedback on the overall design approach.

One idea is to keep a single Rime plugin and allow users to select the protocol during initialization. For example:

• Add a protocol parameter when initializing the Rime TTS
• Supported values could be something like http, ws_json, ws_binary
• Inside synthesize(), route to the appropriate implementation and return the correct stream type based on the selected protocol

This would allow:

• A single, unified Rime plugin
• Minimal API surface changes for users
• Flexibility to switch protocols without changing plugins

Question

Does this approach align with LiveKit’s plugin design philosophy, or would you recommend:

• Separate implementations internally with a shared interface
• Multiple plugins instead of one
• Any existing patterns in the codebase that would be better to follow here

Before moving forward, I would appreciate any guidance or recommendations on the preferred design.

Thanks!

Workarounds / Alternatives

No workarounds

Additional Context

No response

[gokuljs]

#4389