🎙️ 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? Try the quickstart.

🚀 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

🧭 Looking to build structured conversations? Check out Pipecat Flows for managing complex conversational states and transitions.

🧠 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)

📱 Client SDKs

You can connect to Pipecat from any platform using our official SDKs:

JavaScript	React	React Native
Swift	Kotlin	C++

🎬 See it in action

🧩 Available services

📚 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: 3.10 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 krisp \
     --no-extra local \
     --no-extra ultravox # (ultravox not fully supported on macOS)
   

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.

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

Setting up your editor

This project uses strict PEP 8 formatting via Ruff.

Emacs

You can use use-package to install emacs-lazy-ruff package and configure ruff arguments:

(use-package lazy-ruff
  :ensure t
  :hook ((python-mode . lazy-ruff-mode))
  :config
  (setq lazy-ruff-format-command "ruff format")
  (setq lazy-ruff-check-command "ruff check --select I"))

ruff was installed in the venv environment described before, so you should be able to use pyvenv-auto to automatically load that environment inside Emacs.

(use-package pyvenv-auto
  :ensure t
  :defer t
  :hook ((python-mode . pyvenv-auto-run)))

Visual Studio Code

Install the Ruff extension. Then edit the user settings (Ctrl-Shift-P Open User Settings (JSON)) and set it as the default Python formatter, and enable formatting on save:

"[python]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "charliermarsh.ruff",
    "editor.formatOnSave": true
}

PyCharm

ruff was installed in the venv environment described before, now to enable autoformatting on save, go to File -> Settings -> Tools -> File Watchers and add a new watcher with the following settings:

1. Name: Ruff formatter
2. File type: Python
3. Working directory: $ContentRoot$
4. Arguments: format $FilePath$
5. Program: $PyInterpreterDirectory$/ruff

🤝 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