Using Deepgram Voice Agent from the Go SDK

When to use this product

Use this skill for live Voice Agent runtime flows in pkg/client/agent.

• open an agent WebSocket session
• send initial settings
• stream audio
• react to agent events and function-call messages
• update prompt/speak settings during the session

Use a different skill when:

• you only need STT (deepgram-go-speech-to-text)
• you only need TTS (deepgram-go-text-to-speech)
• you need management/admin endpoints (deepgram-go-management-api)

Authentication

Set DEEPGRAM_API_KEY before opening the agent connection.

export DEEPGRAM_API_KEY="your_api_key"

Quick start

package main

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"

	agentws "github.com/deepgram/deepgram-go-sdk/v3/pkg/api/agent/v1/websocket"
	agent "github.com/deepgram/deepgram-go-sdk/v3/pkg/client/agent"
)

func main() {
	if err := run(); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

func run() error {
	ctx := context.Background()
	settings := agent.NewSettingsConfigurationOptions()
	handler := agentws.NewDefaultChanHandler()

	conn, err := agent.NewWSUsingChanWithDefaults(ctx, settings, handler)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	defer conn.Stop()

	if ok := conn.Connect(); !ok {
		return fmt.Errorf("connect failed")
	}

	conn.Start()

	// The handler receives Welcome, ConversationText, FunctionCallRequest, and audio events.
	// Stream audio frames, watch agent events, and respond to function calls as needed.
	return nil
}

Key parameters

• constructors
  • agent.NewSettingsConfigurationOptions()
  • agent.NewWSUsingChanWithDefaults(...)
  • agent.NewWSUsingChan(...)
• runtime methods
  • Connect, Start, ProcessMessage, Stream, Write, KeepAlive
  • reconnect helpers like AttemptReconnect and error handling helpers in the WS client
• message and event payloads in pkg/api/agent/v1/websocket/interfaces/types.go
  • UpdatePrompt
  • UpdateSpeak
  • InjectAgentMessage
  • InjectUserMessage
  • FunctionCallResponse
  • server events such as WelcomeResponse, ConversationTextResponse, FunctionCallRequestResponse, AgentStartedSpeakingResponse, AgentAudioDoneResponse

API reference (layered)

1. In-repo reference
   • README.md
   • pkg/client/agent/client.go
   • pkg/client/agent/v1/websocket/client_channel.go
   • pkg/client/agent/v1/websocket/new_using_chan.go
   • pkg/client/interfaces/v1/types-agent.go
   • pkg/api/agent/v1/websocket/interfaces/types.go
2. OpenAPI
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/openapi.yaml
3. AsyncAPI
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/asyncapi.yaml
4. Context7
   • /llmstxt/developers_deepgram_llms_txt
5. Product docs
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/reference/voice-agent/voice-agent
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/voice-agent
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/configure-voice-agent
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/voice-agent-message-flow

Gotchas

1. This repo exposes live Voice Agent runtime over WebSockets, not a persisted configuration-management surface.
2. Keep audio streaming, event handling, and any function-call response loop running concurrently.
3. Follow the example session setup instead of inventing your own event names; the repo already defines concrete message structs.
4. Channel-based constructors require an AgentMessageChan handler; events are routed there rather than pulled from the client.
5. Use defer conn.Stop(), and remember that Connect() returns bool rather than error.

Example files in this repo

• examples/agent/websocket/simple/main.go
• examples/agent/websocket/no_mic/main.go
• examples/agent/websocket/arbitrary_keys/main.go
• tests/unit_test/agent/agent_speak_test.go

Central product skills

For cross-language Deepgram product knowledge — the consolidated API reference, documentation finder, focused runnable recipes, third-party integration examples, and MCP setup — install the central skills:

npx skills add deepgram/skills

This SDK ships language-idiomatic code skills; deepgram/skills ships cross-language product knowledge (see api, docs, recipes, examples, starters, setup-mcp).