Attempt to make audio and speech discovery more robust.

README.md

@@ -147,6 +147,23 @@ a different socket or server explicitly. The sound driver does not read
 PulseAudio's `client.conf`.
 Speech output uses Speech Dispatcher's own audio configuration.
 
+Fenrir retries temporary speech initialization failures for up to 20 seconds
+before acquiring keyboards. A lost Speech Dispatcher connection gets a separate
+20-second recovery window in the speech worker; input remains responsive and
+speech accumulated during the outage is discarded. If recovery fails, Fenrir
+exits and releases its keyboards before waiting for other services to shut down.
+Sound effects reconnect independently, without stopping working speech. Sound
+startup calls have a three-second limit; an unresponsive attempt is abandoned
+without starting overlapping attempts.
+
+These mechanisms do not require a particular init system. Boot services running
+as root keep root-owned Speech Dispatcher startup. With `sudo fenrir`, a missing
+local Speech Dispatcher can instead be started as the invoking user, identified
+by `SUDO_UID`; only the daemon child drops privileges. Audio servers still need
+appropriate startup configuration and device/socket permissions. See
+[audio recovery and verification](docs/audio-recovery.md) for limitations and
+test procedures.
+
 ### X11 terminal
 
 From an X11 terminal that supplies `WINDOWID`: