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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pipecat.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Pipecat Subagents is a distributed multi-agent framework for Pipecat. Each agent runs its own pipeline and communicates with other agents through a shared message bus. The programming model stays the same whether agents run locally in a single process or distributed across machines.

Quickstart

Build a multi-agent voice bot with agent handoff in under 10 minutes

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What You Can Build

Agent Handoff

A greeter routes to support, support routes back. The user talks to one agent at a time with seamless transfers.

Parallel Workers

A moderator dispatches a topic to multiple workers in parallel, collects their perspectives, and synthesizes a response.

Mixed Agent Types

Combine a free-form LLM agent with a structured Flows agent for form-like interactions like bookings and reservations.

Custom Voices

Give each agent its own TTS voice so users hear a different voice when transferred to a different agent.

Distributed Agents

Run agents across separate processes or machines, sharing the same bus and scaling each independently.

Proxy Agents

Connect agents on different buses for point-to-point communication.

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How It Works

Every subagent system has a main agent that owns the transport (audio I/O) and routes frames to specialized agents through the bus: 
AgentRunner
  └── Main Agent (transport + BusBridge)
        ├── Voice Agent A (LLM, bridged)
        └── Voice Agent B (LLM, bridged)
  • The main agent handles STT, TTS, and places a BusBridgeProcessor where an LLM would normally go
  • Voice agents run their own LLM pipelines and receive frames from the bus
  • Only one agent is active at a time — agents transfer control with handoff_to()
  • Worker agents can run tasks in the background and return results

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Ready to Build?

Quickstart

Build a multi-agent voice bot with agent handoff

Learn the Concepts

Walk through agents, the bus, handoff, and task coordination step by step

Fundamentals

Deep dives into the bus bridge, tools, Flows, distributed setups, and more

Examples

Complete working examples for every pattern