pipecat/changelog/4372.changed.md

• Loosened the protobuf dependency to >=5.29.6,<7, so projects pinned to protobuf 5.x can install pipecat-ai again. The previous >=6.31.1,<7 pin (introduced in 1.0.8 alongside the nvidia-riva-client 2.25.1 upgrade) silently blocked any environment whose dependency graph already constrained protobuf to the 5.x line. The bundled frames_pb2.py is now compiled with protoc 5.x so it imports cleanly on both 5.x and 6.x runtimes.

  Installing the nvidia extra still pulls protobuf 6.x: nvidia-riva-client 2.25.1 ships gencode that requires a 6.x runtime, so pipecat-ai[nvidia] now declares protobuf>=6.31.1,<7 explicitly to cover an upstream packaging gap (https://github.com/nvidia-riva/python-clients/issues/172).