Is there any way to have the assistant not speak first, but if at the start of the call, there is a long stretch of silence, I want the assistant to say "Hello? are you there?"... it looks like idle messages only play after there has already been some conversation.

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@Vapi > configure the system to detect silence and prompt the assistant to say "Hello? Are you there?" after a certain period of inactivity. Yeah how can we do that lol

@Alex To achieve this, you would typically need to implement a silence detection mechanism within your voice application. This mechanism would monitor the audio stream for a period of inactivity (silence) and, upon detecting a predefined duration of silence, trigger the assistant to speak. While VAPI does not have a built-in feature specifically for initial silence detection, you can often use the platform's event handling to create a custom solution. For example, you might set up an event listener for 'no input' that activates after the call starts, and if no voice input is detected within a certain timeframe, the assistant can then say "Hello? Are you there?" If you need assistance with the technical implementation or if this feature is not currently supported, please ask support for more info on this. They can provide guidance on whether this functionality can be integrated into your current setup and how to proceed.

Hey @Alex you can set the assistant firstMessageMode to

assistant-waits-for-user

and then it will wait for user to speak first and along with idleMessages, which will be voiced out if user doesn't speaks anything.