User Started/Stopped Speaking Event

{
  "message_type": "conversation",
  "event_type": "conversation.user.started_speaking",
  "seq": 400,
  "conversation_id": "your-conversation-id",
  "inference_id": "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  "turn_idx": 6
}

Outbound: Tavus tells you when the user has just started or stopped speaking so you can drive UI or backend actions at those moments.

message_type

string

conversation for conversation-layer app messages.

Example:

"conversation"

event_type

enum<string>

conversation.user.started_speaking or conversation.user.stopped_speaking.

Available options:

conversation.user.started_speaking,

conversation.user.stopped_speaking

Example:

"conversation.user.started_speaking"

timestamp

number

Unix timestamp (seconds since epoch) indicating when this event was created. Use this to build timestamped transcripts or reconstruct the timeline of a conversation.

Example:

1746000000.123

seq

integer

Monotonic per event; a higher seq was emitted later. Use with turn_idx as in Event ordering and turn tracking.

Example:

42

conversation_id

string

Omitted when empty.

Example:

"your-conversation-id"

inference_id

string

UUID for this utterance when present; with speculative inference the id may change while the user is still speaking, so user.started_speaking inference_id often will not match later conversation.utterance / tool_call ids.

Example:

"550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000"

turn_idx

integer

Turn index; increments when conversation.respond is processed. Groups utterances, tool calls, and speaking-state events for the same turn. See Event ordering and turn tracking.

Example:

6

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