Voice Agent overview
Updated
Understand what a voice agent is, how this section is organized, and which path to follow in the sidebar.
A Voice Agent is a real-time system that listens to a user, reasons over the conversation, and responds with speech. On Agora, that experience is built from a shared foundation: real-time transport, an agent runtime, AI models, and the endpoint where the conversation is delivered.
Agora supports two Voice Agent paths: in apps and on dedicated devices. Choose In apps if your agent lives in a web, mobile, desktop, or backend-assisted app experience. Choose On dedicated devices if your endpoint is embedded or hardware-first, such as a toy, wearable, kiosk, or companion. Use the quickstart that matches your endpoint to jump directly into the right implementation path.
In apps quickstart
Build the minimal backend-plus-client flow and get a working voice agent running quickly.
Dedicated devices quickstart
Bring up the Convo AI Device Kit quickly and verify the end-to-end device workflow.
Capabilities
No matter where you ship it, a Voice Agent usually has the same core layers:
- Real-time transport: moves audio, events, and conversation state between the user and the agent with low latency.
- Agent runtime: manages the session lifecycle, turn taking, interruptions, memory, and tool orchestration.
- Models: provide ASR, LLM, TTS, and optional multimodal capabilities.
- Endpoint: presents the experience to the user, either through an app or a dedicated device.
The first three layers stay conceptually similar across the docs. The main split in the sidebar happens at the endpoint layer, because app teams and device teams need different implementation workflows.
How this section is organized
The AI sidebar is structured in two paths:
- In apps: for web, mobile, desktop, and backend-assisted app experiences.
- On dedicated devices: for embedded or hardware-first endpoints such as toys, wearables, kiosks, and companions.
Both paths share the same Voice Agent idea, but they differ in what teams need to build next. App teams usually care first about session orchestration, UI, model behavior, and runtime events. Device teams usually care first about bring-up, networking, firmware, controls, and hardware integration.