diff --git a/src/supertonic_3_mlx/pipeline.py b/src/supertonic_3_mlx/pipeline.py
index 2af0662..5da6a62 100644
--- a/src/supertonic_3_mlx/pipeline.py
+++ b/src/supertonic_3_mlx/pipeline.py
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Flow:
 
 Public API:
 
-    pipe = SupertonicMLXPipeline.from_pretrained("ambassadia/supertonic-3-mlx")
+    pipe = SupertonicMLXPipeline.from_pretrained("/tmp/supertonic3/model")
     wav = pipe.generate("Hello world", voice="F1", lang="en")
     import soundfile as sf
     sf.write("out.wav", wav, pipe.sample_rate)
@@ -214,15 +214,49 @@ def _load_into(model, weights: dict) -> int:
 # ── Tokenization ────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
 
-def _encode_text(text: str, indexer: list[int], lang: str = "en") -> np.ndarray:
-    """Encode a text string into character IDs.
+_ENDING_PUNCT = ".!?,;:'\")]}»›"
 
-    The unicode_indexer is a flat list of size 65536; ``indexer[ord(c)]`` gives
-    the token ID for character ``c`` (-1 = unknown). For Phase T.4 we wrap the
-    text with no special language tokens — the ONNX SDK uses language tags but
-    our pipeline currently runs unconditioned on language for the first WAV
-    emission (parity validation happens after).
+
+def _preprocess_text(text: str, lang: str = "en") -> str:
+    """Mirror the SDK's UnicodeProcessor._preprocess_text contract.
+
+    Supertonic 3 is multilingual; the model is trained with utterances
+    wrapped in ``<lang>...</lang>`` language tokens (Supertone's
+    ``UnicodeProcessor._add_language_token``). Bypassing this wrapping was
+    the secondary bug that compounded with the off-by-one Euler schedule to
+    produce structureless audio (verified by ONNX-only ablation in
+    ``debug/supertonic3_schedule_ablation.py``).
+
+    Minimum viable port of the SDK's pipeline:
+      1. NFKD unicode normalisation
+      2. Whitespace collapse + strip
+      3. Trailing period if the string doesn't end with punctuation
+      4. Language token wrap ``<lang>text</lang>``
+
+    The SDK additionally performs emoji removal, symbol normalisation,
+    abbreviation expansion, and quote deduplication — those are quality
+    polish and can be ported later; they are not load-bearing for the
+    primary fix.
     """
+    import unicodedata, re
+    text = unicodedata.normalize("NFKD", text)
+    text = re.sub(r"\s+", " ", text).strip()
+    if text and text[-1] not in _ENDING_PUNCT:
+        text += "."
+    if lang is not None:
+        text = f"<{lang}>{text}</{lang}>"
+    return text
+
+
+def _encode_text(text: str, indexer: list[int], lang: str = "en") -> np.ndarray:
+    """Encode a text string into character IDs via the SDK-compatible pipeline.
+
+    ``indexer`` is a flat list of size 65536; ``indexer[ord(c)]`` gives the
+    token ID for character ``c`` (-1 = unknown). The text is first
+    preprocessed via :func:`_preprocess_text` so the encoding matches what
+    Supertonic 3 was trained on (NFKD-normalised + ``<lang>``-wrapped).
+    """
+    text = _preprocess_text(text, lang=lang)
     ids = []
     for c in text:
         cp = ord(c)
@@ -231,7 +265,6 @@ def _encode_text(text: str, indexer: list[int], lang: str = "en") -> np.ndarray:
             if tok >= 0:
                 ids.append(tok)
     if not ids:
-        # fallback to a single space token to avoid empty input
         ids = [indexer[ord(" ")]] if indexer[ord(" ")] >= 0 else [0]
     return np.asarray(ids, dtype=np.int32)
 
@@ -522,11 +555,18 @@ class SupertonicMLXPipeline:
         for k, v in style_kv:
             kv_flat.extend([k, v])
 
-        # Euler with CFG — 5 steps by default
+        # Euler with CFG — 5 steps by default.
+        # NOTE: ONNX SDK passes ``current_step = 0..N-1`` and computes
+        # ``t_norm = current_step / total_step`` → schedule = [0.0, 0.2,
+        # 0.4, 0.6, 0.8]. Previously we were passing ``step + 1`` which
+        # shifted the schedule to [0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0]; the flow-matching
+        # model is trained on the SDK schedule and the off-by-one collapses
+        # the audio to structureless noise (verified by ONNX-only ablation
+        # in debug/supertonic3_schedule_ablation.py — wav cosine 0.0037).
         x = noise
         total_step = mx.array([float(n_steps)], dtype=self.dtype)
         for step in range(n_steps):
-            current_step = mx.array([float(step + 1)], dtype=self.dtype)
+            current_step = mx.array([float(step)], dtype=self.dtype)
             t_norm = current_step / total_step
             t_norm_2 = mx.concatenate([t_norm, t_norm], axis=0)
             x = self._cached_step_compiled(