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The UI Agent Protocol lets server-side AI agents observe and drive
a GUI app on the client side through structured RTVI messages.
Five new top-level RTVI types in kebab-case, in line with the rest
of the protocol:
ui-event client → server (named event with payload)
ui-command server → client (named command with payload)
ui-snapshot client → server (accessibility tree of the page)
ui-cancel-task client → server (cancel an in-flight task group)
ui-task server → client (task lifecycle envelope)
Each ships paired ``*Data`` / ``*Message`` pydantic models in
``rtvi.models``, following the existing RTVI envelope convention
(``BotReady`` / ``BotReadyData``, ``Error`` / ``ErrorData``, etc.).
Built-in command payload models (``Toast``, ``Navigate``,
``ScrollTo``, ``Highlight``, ``Focus``, ``Click``, ``SetInputValue``,
``SelectText``) ship alongside; matching default React handlers
live in ``@pipecat-ai/client-react``.
Bumps the RTVI ``PROTOCOL_VERSION`` from ``1.2.0`` to ``1.3.0``.
Purely additive: only new top-level message types are introduced;
no existing wire shapes are changed. The major-version
compatibility check on ``client-ready`` still passes for older
1.x clients, so old clients continue to connect without warning;
they simply will not exercise the new types.
The ``RTVIProcessor`` registers a new ``on_ui_message`` event
handler that fires for inbound ``ui-event`` / ``ui-snapshot`` /
``ui-cancel-task`` with the parsed Message envelope, mirroring how
``on_client_message`` works for ``client-message``.
Five new pipeline frames let pipeline observers and processors see
UI traffic the same way they see other RTVI messages, mirroring
the frame-and-event pattern used by ``client-message``:
RTVIUICommandFrame(command_name, payload)
Pushed by downstream code (e.g. ``pipecat-ai-subagents``'s
bridge) to send a UI command to the client. Wrapped by the
observer into a ``UICommandMessage`` envelope.
RTVIUITaskFrame(data: UITaskData)
Same shape but for ``ui-task``; wrapped into ``UITaskMessage``.
``UITaskData`` is a discriminated union of the four lifecycle
kinds (group_started / task_update / task_completed /
group_completed).
RTVIUIEventFrame(msg_id, event_name, payload)
RTVIUISnapshotFrame(msg_id, tree)
RTVIUICancelTaskFrame(msg_id, task_id, reason)
Pushed by ``RTVIProcessor._handle_message`` whenever the
matching inbound message arrives, alongside firing
``on_ui_message``. Pipeline observers and processors can match
on the frame; subscribers like the subagents bridge keep using
the event handler.
The data layer is the canonical authority for the wire format:
higher-level frameworks like ``pipecat-ai-subagents`` build the
agent abstractions on top, and single-LLM Pipecat apps can target
the same wire format directly via custom tools that emit these
typed messages.
🎙️ Pipecat: Real-Time Voice & Multimodal AI Agents
Pipecat is an open-source Python framework for building real-time voice and multimodal conversational agents. Orchestrate audio and video, AI services, different transports, and conversation pipelines effortlessly—so you can focus on what makes your agent unique.
Want to dive right in? Run
pipecat init quickstartor follow the quickstart guide.
🚀 What You Can Build
- Voice Assistants – natural, streaming conversations with AI
- AI Companions – coaches, meeting assistants, characters
- Multimodal Interfaces – voice, video, images, and more
- Interactive Storytelling – creative tools with generative media
- Business Agents – customer intake, support bots, guided flows
- Complex Dialog Systems – design logic with structured conversations
🧠 Why Pipecat?
- Voice-first: Integrates speech recognition, text-to-speech, and conversation handling
- Pluggable: Supports many AI services and tools
- Composable Pipelines: Build complex behavior from modular components
- Real-Time: Ultra-low latency interaction with different transports (e.g. WebSockets or WebRTC)
🌐 Pipecat Ecosystem
🧩 Multi-agent systems
Need multiple AI agents working together? Pipecat Subagents lets you build distributed multi-agent systems where each agent runs its own pipeline and communicates through a shared message bus. Hand off conversations between specialists, dispatch background tasks, and scale agents across processes or machines.
📱 Client SDKs
Building client applications? You can connect to Pipecat from any platform using our official SDKs:
JavaScript | React | React Native | Swift | Kotlin | C++ | ESP32
🧭 Structured conversations
Looking to build structured conversations? Check out Pipecat Flows for managing complex conversational states and transitions.
🪄 Beautiful UIs
Want to build beautiful and engaging experiences? Checkout the Voice UI Kit, a collection of components, hooks and templates for building voice AI applications quickly.
🛠️ Create and deploy projects
Create a new project in under a minute with the Pipecat CLI. Then use the CLI to monitor and deploy your agent to production.
🔍 Debugging
Looking for help debugging your pipeline and processors? Check out Whisker, a real-time Pipecat debugger.
🖥️ Terminal
Love terminal applications? Check out Tail, a terminal dashboard for Pipecat.
🤖 Claude Code Skills
Use Pipecat Skills with Claude Code to scaffold projects, deploy to Pipecat Cloud, and more. Install the marketplace with:
claude plugin marketplace add pipecat-ai/skills
and install any of the available plugins.
🧩 Community Integrations
Build and share your own Pipecat service integrations! Browse existing community integrations or check out our guide to create your own.
📺️ Pipecat TV Channel
Catch new features, interviews, and how-tos on our Pipecat TV channel.
🎬 See it in action
🧩 Available services
📚 View full services documentation →
⚡ Getting started
You can get started with Pipecat running on your local machine, then move your agent processes to the cloud when you're ready.
-
Install uv
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | shNeed help? Refer to the uv install documentation.
-
Install the module
# For new projects uv init my-pipecat-app cd my-pipecat-app uv add pipecat-ai # Or for existing projects uv add pipecat-ai -
Set up your environment
cp env.example .env -
To keep things lightweight, only the core framework is included by default. If you need support for third-party AI services, you can add the necessary dependencies with:
uv add "pipecat-ai[option,...]"
Using pip? You can still use
pip install pipecat-aiandpip install "pipecat-ai[option,...]"to get set up.
🧪 Code examples
- Foundational — small snippets that build on each other, introducing one or two concepts at a time
- Example apps — complete applications that you can use as starting points for development
🛠️ Contributing to the framework
Prerequisites
Minimum Python Version: 3.11 Recommended Python Version: >= 3.12
Setup Steps
-
Clone the repository and navigate to it:
git clone https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat.git cd pipecat -
Install development and testing dependencies:
uv sync --group dev --all-extras \ --no-extra gstreamer \ --no-extra local \ -
Install the git pre-commit hooks:
uv run pre-commit install
Note
: Some extras (local, gstreamer) require system dependencies. See documentation if you encounter build errors.
Claude Code Skills
Install development workflow skills for contributing to Pipecat with Claude Code:
claude plugin marketplace add pipecat-ai/pipecat
claude plugin install pipecat-dev@pipecat-dev-skills
Running tests
To run all tests, from the root directory:
uv run pytest
Run a specific test suite:
uv run pytest tests/test_name.py
🤝 Contributing
We welcome contributions from the community! Whether you're fixing bugs, improving documentation, or adding new features, here's how you can help:
- Found a bug? Open an issue
- Have a feature idea? Start a discussion
- Want to contribute code? Check our CONTRIBUTING.md guide
- Documentation improvements? Docs PRs are always welcome
Before submitting a pull request, please check existing issues and PRs to avoid duplicates.
We aim to review all contributions promptly and provide constructive feedback to help get your changes merged.