Voice Detection

Configure how your persona detects speech, handles silence, and manages turn-taking

Configure how eagerly your persona responds to the user and how it handles silence via voiceDetectionOptions in the persona config.

const personaConfig = {
  name: "Cara",
  avatarId: "30fa96d0-26c4-4e55-94a0-517025942e18",
  avatarModel: "cara-4",
  voiceId: "6bfbe25a-979d-40f3-a92b-5394170af54b",
  llmId: "a7cf662c-2ace-4de1-a21e-ef0fbf144bb7",
  systemPrompt: "You are Cara, a helpful customer service representative.",
  voiceDetectionOptions: {
    endOfSpeechSensitivity: 0.5,
    silenceBeforeSkipTurnSeconds: 5,
    silenceBeforeSessionEndSeconds: 3,
    silenceBeforeAutoEndTurnSeconds: 5,
    speechEnhancementLevel: 0.8
  }
};

Options

Option	Range	Default	Description
endOfSpeechSensitivity	0 – 1	0.5	How eager the persona is to start speaking. 0 = waits until confident the user is done. 1 = responds earlier.
silenceBeforeSkipTurnSeconds	0 – 900 seconds	15 seconds	How long the user can be silent before their turn is skipped and the persona prompts them. Set to 0 to disable turn skip so the persona never prompts a quiet user.
silenceBeforeSessionEndSeconds	0 – 7200 seconds	60 seconds	How long the user can be silent before the session ends automatically. Set to 0 to disable automatic session end.
silenceBeforeAutoEndTurnSeconds	0.5 – 10 seconds	5 seconds	If the user starts speaking then stops, how long to wait before treating the turn as complete.
speechEnhancementLevel	0 – 1	0.8	Level of noise reduction and voice enhancement applied to input audio. Higher values improve transcription accuracy in noisy environments.

Setting silenceBeforeSkipTurnSeconds to 0 disables turn skip — the persona will not prompt a quiet user. Setting silenceBeforeSessionEndSeconds to 0 disables automatic session end on silence.

These settings can be set when creating or updating a persona. See the API Reference for details.