I am trying to manage my agents idle call messages using assistant hooks via

customer.speech.timeout

per the official vapi documentation < https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/idle-messages > **What should happen: **When I set the

timeoutSeconds

to 10 seconds, I expect during the call after 10 seconds of silence that the assistant hook will execute and the agent will say an idle message. What actually happens: The earliest time i can actually get the assistant to execute a hook to send an idle message is after 40 seconds by setting

timeoutSeconds

to 40 seconds. Providing any setting lower than 40 second timeout does not seem to execute the hook. All assistant hooks set with a 40 seconds or more for

timeoutSeconds

work, anything lower does not trigger. Edit: > Under further testing I have noticed that the timeoutSeconds doesn't not actually take effect until the call is at least 40 seconds in. For example: Say I set a 10s timeout. > - I answer and stay silent immediately. It will not trigger until 40 seconds, that's the earliest trigger point. > - I answer and say hello. Agent responds and it's 20s into the call. If i stay silent for 10s, the idle message assistant hook will not trigger still. Its only after 40s into the call if i stay silent then timeout starts to take effect. - This is my assistant ID to help with inspecting my assistant for trouble shooting purposes if needed:

078429e5-1694-4ef5-8c3b-1f4ffb6064b4

I've also included in the below the hooks configuration for ease of reference too. - This is a call Id to provide evidence to show that the

timeoutSeconds

for hooks trigger on

customer.speech.timeout

are not working. You can see in the logs that the first hook to trigger is 40 seconds in, and not 10 seconds as expected.

22b34a59-2d5f-476f-9f90-967d68bd55c6

Could I please get some official Vapi answers on why I am experiencing this bug and what the work around or solution is? Has any one else experienced something similar too?

Try explicitly verifying your hook configuration and increasing the timeout slightly to test for processing delays. Here’s a sample configuration for a 10-second idle timeout:

json
{
  "hooks": [{
    "on": "customer.speech.timeout",
    "options": { "timeoutSeconds": 10, "triggerMaxCount": 2, "triggerResetMode": "onUserSpeech" },
    "do": [{ "type": "say", "exact": "Are you still there?" }]
  }]
}

If this does not work, check your call logs for any errors and consider reaching out to Vapi support, as the documentation does not mention a known bug with timeouts under 40 seconds ([source](https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/idle-messages)). Source: - [Idle messages](https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/idle-messages)

@User Hi there, just a friendly bump here 🙂

Hey! To help track down this issue, could you share: \- The call ID \- When exactly this happened (the timestamp) \- What response you expected to get \- What response you actually got instead This would really help us figure out what went wrong!

Hi Praveen, I have provided all of that in my original post. Could you please take a look?

Hey Jeremy, thanks for sharing your details. Our team will look into it and get back to you soon with an update.

Great thanks Praveen. Just to let you know that the assitant Id that i shared we have updated the configs of it recently so it doesn't quite represent what it was during the time, however the issue still stands - worth your team replicating it yourself to see.

Sorry it's taking longer than usual. Our team is looking into it and will get back to you with an update soon.

Thanks for the Update Praveen. any news on why this is the case?

Please try configuring a

silenceTimeoutMessage

since in your assistant configuration it is currently blank. This may be more reliable than using hooks at this time. Let us know how that works for you