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Documentation Index

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Pipecat is an open source Python framework for building voice and multimodal AI agents. It orchestrates AI services, network transports, and audio processing to enable ultra-low latency conversations that feel natural and responsive.

Quickstart

Want to dive right in? Build and run your first Pipecat application

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What You Can Build

Voice Assistants

Natural, real-time conversations with AI using speech recognition and synthesis

Phone Agents

Connect to your agent via phone for support, intake, and customer service interactions

Multimodal Apps

Applications that combine voice, video, images, and text for rich interactions

Creative Experiences

Storytelling experiences and social companions that engage users

Interactive Games

Voice-controlled games and interactive experiences with real-time AI responses

Conversation Flows

Build structured conversations with Pipecat Flows to complete tasks and improve LLM accuracy

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How It Works

Pipecat orchestrates AI services in a pipeline, which is a series of processors that handle real-time audio, text, and video frames with ultra-low latency. Here’s what happens in a typical voice conversation:
  1. Transport receives audio from the user (browser, phone, etc.)
  2. Speech Recognition converts speech to text in real-time
  3. LLM generates intelligent responses based on context
  4. Speech Synthesis converts responses back to natural speech
  5. Transport streams audio back to the user
In most cases, the entire round-trip interaction happens between 500-800ms, creating a natural conversation experience for the user. Pipecat Overview

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A Multi-Agent System

The bot above is a single agent. Pipecat is also a multi-agent system: the same WorkerRunner can coordinate many agents that communicate over a shared message bus. Most agents run their own pipeline (PipelineWorker, LLMWorker), while a coordinator can be a plain BaseWorker with no pipeline at all. A normal bot is just the one-agent case, so every Pipecat app is multi-agent ready.

Agent Handoff

Specialized agents that transfer control seamlessly during a conversation.

Job Coordination

Dispatch work to multiple agents in parallel and collect their results.

Distributed Agents

Run agents across separate processes or machines on a shared bus.

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Installation

Pipecat requires Python 3.11 or later and is published on PyPI as pipecat-ai. Install the base package with optional extras for each transport, AI service, and utility you need: 
uv add "pipecat-ai[daily,deepgram,openai,cartesia,silero]"
Each service page lists the exact extra to install. To upgrade to the latest version: 
uv lock --upgrade-package pipecat-ai
uv sync

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Ready to Build?

Quickstart

Build and run your first Pipecat application

Core Concepts

Learn about pipelines, processors, transports, and context management

Supported Services

Browse the complete list of 100+ AI service integrations

Deploy

Deploy to Pipecat Cloud or self-host on your own infrastructure