[HN Gopher] Build an AI telephony agent for inbound and outbound...
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Build an AI telephony agent for inbound and outbound calls
Author : sagarkava
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-07-30 17:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sagarkava wrote:
| Hi I am Sagar, We just open-sourced a complete framework to build
| an AI-powered telephony agent that can handle both inbound and
| outbound calls--using Python, SIP, and cloud LLMs like OpenAI or
| Gemini.
|
| You can use it to create smart appointment bots, voice feedback
| collectors, or even enterprise IVR systems. It's modular (plug in
| your SIP provider or AI model), production-ready, and extensible
| for real-time workflows.
|
| Features include:
|
| SIP & VoIP call handling (Twilio, Plivo, etc)
|
| LLM-integrated AI agent (customizable prompt & tools)
|
| FastAPI-based server for routing and control
|
| Plugins for STT, TTS, sentiment analysis
|
| Support for Agent2Agent and MCP protocols
|
| GitHub Repo:https://github.com/videosdk-live/agents Full Blog:
| https://www.videosdk.live/blog/ai-telephony-agent-inbound-ou...
|
| Would love feedback from anyone working with telephony, LLMs, or
| real-time automation!
| methuselah_in wrote:
| No offense, but how many people will be jobless because of this?
| sagarkava wrote:
| Totally valid concern. The goal isn't to replace people, but to
| offload repetitive tasks so humans can focus on higher-value
| work.
|
| We've also built in Human-in-the-Loop support so a person can
| step in anytime the AI falls short. More on that here:
| https://docs.videosdk.live/ai_agents/human-in-the-loop
|
| It's about shifting roles, not eliminating them and doing it
| responsibly.
| methuselah_in wrote:
| What you say is totally going to do opposite! In developing
| countries like India here people don't have too many skills
| are going to face the heat anyways
| rwyinuse wrote:
| I'm not convinced that most companies are going to choose
| shifting all those people to "higher value work", when the
| alternative is firing at least some of them them to improve
| short-term shareholder profits.
| herval wrote:
| it turns out many professions are essentially a long loop of
| repetitive tasks. Think telemarketing, or phone support, for
| instance. What kind of "higher-value work" would a phone
| support agent do?
| tantalor wrote:
| The question is totally fair, but it's unreasonable (imho) to
| expect owners of this project to have to answer. We are looking
| at < 500 lines of python, mostly just gluing together SIP and
| agents.
|
| My reaction was slightly different: how many companies selling
| this (meager) service at a high premium will go out of business
| now that it's free/open?
| logical_proof wrote:
| We just hook up generators to bikes so that the former phone
| workers can now power the AI thats replaced them. This will
| eventually be a cheaper alternative to the current power grid
| as ai electricity consumption increases.
| weikju wrote:
| Ah, so THIS is the background story of that Black Mirror
| episode!
| matt-p wrote:
| A huge number of these jobs will go yes. A call centre
| supervisor may be safe taking escalation calls that need a
| human and so on but the masses will be replaced by this kind of
| tech.
|
| However what will actually happen is society will use these
| people to brick lay for houses, care for the elderly or
| something else. That's honestly a good thing for society as we
| have massive shortages there, and not a bad thing for the
| individuals as a whole.
| losteric wrote:
| > However what will actually happen is society will use these
| people to brick lay for houses, care for the elderly or
| something else. That's honestly a good thing for society as
| we have massive shortages there, and not a bad thing for the
| individuals as a whole.
|
| Labor "shortages" for those jobs exist because they are not
| financially attractive. Why is it a "good thing" to eliminate
| more attractive roles? How does this materially reduce the
| cost of living, or increase for the roles you point to?
| matt-p wrote:
| Let's say answering a phone is 11/hour and laying bricks is
| 11.20/hour. No big shock that people will take the phone
| job, but if you remove that option more people will flow
| into the laying bricks job.
| mixdup wrote:
| I'll take an alternative view of someone else's comment. No
| offense, but how much shittier will my customer service
| experience with my power company or ISP be because of this?
| tguvot wrote:
| as somebody who works in this area: depends on how much effort
| they will be willing to invest. it might be better than current
| service or it might be worse.
|
| big question will be availability of humans as fall back that
| actually have some skills
| morkalork wrote:
| I still can't wrap my head around how making functional
| online portals and well written documentation for customers
| is too hard, but laying off entire call centers and replacing
| them with a chat bot that relies on _checks notes_ a
| functional set of APIs for tool use and well written
| documentation for a KB, is easier. It looks like all the same
| effort plus more!
| cootsnuck wrote:
| You're not wrong. Businesses that do that are going to be
| in for a rude surprise. Time will tell if they care about
| pissing off their customers more than they care about
| getting rid of workers.
| gerdesj wrote:
| No offense, but how about evaluating the project on its own
| merits?
|
| In my experience AI based CS agents are not deployed to
| actually provide customer service. That does not differ too
| much from the "old school" phone call centre with scripts etc.
|
| Anyway, you can run a phone exchange on a RPi. My favorite anti
| marketing thing is a simple IVR: "If you think we would like to
| speak to press 1, if you are making an unsolicited sales call,
| then hang up". However, that will soon be defeated (but not
| yet, I'm happy to report). Eventually, I will need the machine
| to take calls for me. For that I will probably need a system
| like OPs.
|
| When it comes to telephony, the biggest issue is who pays for
| the call. For me it is the caller. For some (US int al) it
| might be the recipient. The only "cost" to me is my time to
| take a call.
|
| Now, back to call centres. You want problem resolution and they
| want call stats. There is a bit of a disconnect. Power
| companies and other utilities all claim to be competitive but
| nearly everywhere that is bollocks.
|
| In the UK we have privatised water companies, covering regions
| but how on earth can I, within the purvey of Wessex water, get
| my water from say Scotland. Ironically enough SSSE (one of the
| S is Scottish) is the local area electrical provider. I can
| choose my electic and gas supplier but not my water supplier.
| How on earth is that a free market? Well it might be but not
| for me, the consumer. I understand that ISP provision in the US
| is pretty similar to our water company situation: you have a
| choice of one.
|
| So, I think, that the problem here is not the AI or the medium
| or whatever but something far deeper and far more entrenched.
|
| Your shitty customer experience is because the status quo is
| say 50-100 years old and nothing to do with some nerdy new
| technology.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| I'm someone who builds these types of voice agent systems for
| businesses. And the short answer is, I think especially for the
| bigger corporations, customer service probably will get
| shittier.
|
| It doesn't have to be inevitable...but the track record of big
| corps and their view of customer-facing departments as being
| loss-centers instead of being directly and indirectly connected
| to retaining and bringing in revenue doesn't leave me
| optimistic.
|
| For small-to-medium businesses...it just depends. SMBs are
| typically more sensitive to the opinions and sentiments of
| their customers (and also bad press) and also typically have
| workers with relatively more institutional and tacit knowledge
| compared to big corporations. So I would like to believe more
| of them will be much more methodical and intentional about
| their approaches (especially with cautionary tales like Klarna
| and DuoLingo). There's no reason for any business to ruin their
| customer service with AI other than impulsive and/or poorly
| executed decisions being made out of some mix of fear, hype,
| greed, or willful ignorance. Entirely avoidable.
| esseph wrote:
| Possibly better, possibly worse.
|
| The bot will have more info and doesn't degrade every few years
| (as nobody is there to be replaced and lose the tribal
| knowledge that makes a business run).
|
| It also.. is just a dumb bot and _only_ knows what it is told.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Just use pipecat
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