Paul Kompfner 47e2f7a037 realtime + local turn detection: drop the user-transcript wait
Add the configuration surface to drive a realtime service like Gemini
Live from local turn detection without paying user-transcript latency.
Cascaded pipelines wait for a transcript before ending the user's turn
because the downstream LLM needs the user's words recorded in context
— but that wait is pure latency in pipelines using local turn
detection to drive a realtime service, which consumes user audio
directly.

Set `wait_for_transcript_to_end_user_turn=False` on
`LLMUserAggregatorParams` to turn this on. With that single flag the
aggregator:

- drops `TranscriptionUserTurnStartStrategy` from the start strategies
  (so late-arriving realtime transcripts don't trigger new turns),
- sets `wait_for_transcript=False` on any stop strategy that supports
  it (so the turn ends on the audible end of the turn, without
  waiting for a transcript),
- fires `on_user_turn_stopped` on the audible end of the turn with
  empty `content` (since the transcript hasn't arrived), and
- defers the context flush until the transcript arrives or a backstop
  timer fires.

A new `on_user_turn_message_finalized` event fires when the user's
message has been written to context. In the default mode it
coincides with `on_user_turn_stopped`; in the delayed-transcript mode
it fires later. Consumers that want the populated transcript should
subscribe to `on_user_turn_message_finalized` — it's the event that
always carries the user message, regardless of mode.

Strategy mutations are logged: loudly when the user passed their own
strategies (we're overwriting parts of their config), quietly
otherwise. The strategy-level `wait_for_transcript` parameter on
`TurnAnalyzerUserTurnStopStrategy` and `SpeechTimeoutUserTurnStopStrategy`
remains exposed for advanced cases.

The example `realtime-gemini-live-local-vad.py` demonstrates the full
pattern.
2026-05-15 13:49:16 -04:00
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pipecat

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🎙️ 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 quickstart or 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

Category Services
Speech-to-Text AssemblyAI, AWS, Azure, Cartesia, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Fal Wizper, Gladia, Google, Gradium, Groq (Whisper), Mistral, NVIDIA, OpenAI (Whisper), Sarvam, Soniox, Speechmatics, Whisper, xAI
LLMs Anthropic, AWS, Azure, Cerebras, DeepSeek, Fireworks AI, Gemini, Grok, Groq, Mistral, Nebius, Novita, NVIDIA NIM, Ollama, OpenAI, OpenAI Responses, OpenRouter, Perplexity, Qwen, SambaNova, Sarvam, Together AI
Text-to-Speech Async, AWS, Azure, Camb AI, Cartesia, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Fish, Google, Gradium, Groq, Hume, Inworld, Kokoro, LMNT, MiniMax, Mistral, Neuphonic, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Piper, Resemble, Rime, Sarvam, Smallest, Soniox, Speechmatics, xAI, XTTS
Speech-to-Speech AWS Nova Sonic, Gemini Multimodal Live, Grok Voice Agent, OpenAI Realtime, Ultravox,
Transport Daily (WebRTC), FastAPI Websocket, LiveKit (WebRTC), SmallWebRTCTransport, WebSocket Server, WhatsApp, Local
Serializers Exotel, Genesys, Plivo, Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage
Video HeyGen, LemonSlice, Tavus, Simli
Memory mem0
Vision & Image fal, Google Imagen, Moondream
Audio Processing Silero VAD, Krisp Viva, Koala, ai-coustics, RNNoise
Analytics & Metrics OpenTelemetry, Sentry
Community Browse community integrations →

📚 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.

  1. Install uv

    curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
    

    Need help? Refer to the uv install documentation.

  2. 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
    
  3. Set up your environment

    cp env.example .env
    
  4. 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-ai and pip 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

  1. Clone the repository and navigate to it:

    git clone https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat.git
    cd pipecat
    
  2. Install development and testing dependencies:

    uv sync --group dev --all-extras \
      --no-extra gstreamer \
      --no-extra local \
    
  3. 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.

🛟 Getting help

➡️ Join our Discord

➡️ Read the docs

➡️ Reach us on X

Description
Open Source framework for voice and multimodal conversational AI
Readme BSD-2-Clause 414 MiB
Languages
Python 100%