Overview: Agents & Calls
Create consistent, reusable voice AI experience with agents or direct call configuration.
Introduction
Ultravox provides two ways to create voice conversations: Agents (recommended) and Direct Calls. For all new projects, we strongly recommend starting with agents as they provide better consistency, reusability, and maintainability.
Agents vs Direct Calls
Agents (Recommended)
Reusable templates that define assistant behavior, personality, and capabilities. Create once, use for multiple calls.
Best for: Production applications, consistent experiences, team collaboration.
Direct Calls
One-time configurations where you specify all settings for each individual call.
Best for: Quick testing, very simple one-off use cases.
Why Start with Agents?
Agents provide a way to define voice assistants that can be reused across multiple calls, ensuring consistent behavior and capabilities. This enables you to maintain a cohesive user experience with minimal configuration overhead at call creation time. Each agent includes a call template that defines system prompts, voice settings, available tools, and more.
Key benefits of using Agents:
Reusable Configuration → Create a single agent definition and use it for multiple calls without repeating configuration settings.
Consistent Experience → Ensure your voice experience maintains the same personality, capabilities, and behavior across all interactions.
Version Control → Update an agent’s configuration in one place and have changes apply to all future calls.
Simplified Deployment → Reduce the complexity of starting calls by referencing an existing agent instead of providing all configuration details.
Agents are ideal for production applications where you want consistent behavior across multiple user interactions.