Using Deepgram Audio Intelligence (JavaScript / TypeScript SDK)

Analytics overlays applied to /v1/listen: summaries, topics, intents, sentiment, language detection, diarization, redaction, entities. Same client surface as STT; turn features on with parameters.

When to use this product

• You have audio and want analytics returned alongside the transcript.
• REST is the primary path; the WebSocket path supports only a subset of intelligence features.

Use a different skill when:

• You just want transcript output → deepgram-js-speech-to-text.
• You already have text and want analytics on that text → deepgram-js-text-intelligence.
• You need Flux turn-taking → deepgram-js-conversational-stt.
• You need a full interactive voice agent → deepgram-js-voice-agent.

Feature availability: REST vs WSS

Authentication

require("dotenv").config();

const { DeepgramClient } = require("@deepgram/sdk");

const deepgramClient = new DeepgramClient({
  apiKey: process.env.DEEPGRAM_API_KEY,
});

Quick start — REST with analytics

From examples/22-transcription-advanced-options.ts:

const data = await deepgramClient.listen.v1.media.transcribeUrl({
  url: "https://dpgr.am/spacewalk.wav",
  model: "nova-3",
  language: "en",
  punctuate: true,
  paragraphs: true,
  utterances: true,
  smart_format: true,
  sentiment: true,
  topics: true,
  custom_topic: "custom_topic",
  custom_topic_mode: "extended",
  intents: true,
  custom_intent: "custom_intent",
  custom_intent_mode: "extended",
  detect_entities: true,
  detect_language: true,
  diarize: true,
  keyterm: ["keyword1", "keyword2"],
  redact: ["pci", "ssn"],
});

Quick start — WSS subset

Start from examples/07-transcription-live-websocket.ts and keep the same socket flow, but only use WSS-supported intelligence flags such as diarize, redact, and detect_entities in the connection args.

const deepgramConnection = await deepgramClient.listen.v1.createConnection({
  model: "nova-3",
  diarize: true,
  redact: "pci",
  detect_entities: true,
});

Key parameters / API surface

• Analytics flags: summarize, topics, intents, sentiment, detect_language, detect_entities, diarize, redact, custom_topic, custom_topic_mode, custom_intent, custom_intent_mode.
• Standard STT flags still apply: model, language, encoding, sample_rate, punctuate, smart_format, utterances, paragraphs, multichannel.
• Nova-3-specific biasing in repo examples uses keyterm, not keywords.

API reference (layered)

1. In-repo reference: reference.md → Listen V1 Media; WSS subset behavior lives in src/CustomClient.ts and src/api/resources/listen/resources/v1/client/{Client,Socket}.ts.
2. Canonical OpenAPI (REST): https://developers.deepgram.com/openapi.yaml
3. Canonical AsyncAPI (WSS): https://developers.deepgram.com/asyncapi.yaml
4. Context7: library ID /llmstxt/developers_deepgram_llms_txt
5. Product docs:
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/stt-intelligence-feature-overview
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/summarization
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/topic-detection
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/intent-recognition
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/sentiment-analysis
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/language-detection
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/redaction
   • https://developers.deepgram.com/docs/diarization

Gotchas

1. summarize on /v1/listen is versioned, not plain boolean. The generated REST surface and examples point at "v2".
2. Most intelligence flags are REST-only. Current WSS connect args do not expose topics, intents, sentiment, summarize, or detect_language.
3. redact typing is looser in practice than in the generated alias. Examples pass arrays like ["pci", "ssn"], even though ListenV1Redact itself is just a string alias.
4. Use keyterm for Nova-3 biasing. examples/22-transcription-advanced-options.ts explicitly notes keywords are not supported for Nova-3.
5. Model/feature support is product-side. nova-3 is the safest choice when mixing many overlays.
6. Diarization quality depends on audio quality and duration. Short or noisy clips churn speakers.

Example files in this repo

• examples/22-transcription-advanced-options.ts
• examples/04-transcription-prerecorded-url.ts
• examples/05-transcription-prerecorded-file.ts
• examples/07-transcription-live-websocket.ts

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).