STT

Speech-to-text providers supported by Patter.

STT (Speech-to-Text)

STT is used in pipeline mode to transcribe caller audio before it reaches your LLM. If you use an engine such as OpenAIRealtime or ElevenLabsConvAI, speech recognition is handled internally by the engine and you do not configure STT separately.

Each STT ships as both a namespaced class (from getpatter.stt import deepgram → deepgram.STT()) and a flat alias (from getpatter import DeepgramSTT). They are equivalent — pick whichever reads best. The flat aliases are convenient for short examples; the namespaced form avoids name collisions when you import several STTs together.

Quickstart

import asyncio
from getpatter import Patter, Twilio, DeepgramSTT, ElevenLabsTTS

phone = Patter(carrier=Twilio(), phone_number="[phone]")  # TWILIO_* from env

agent = phone.agent(
    stt=DeepgramSTT(endpointing_ms=80),   # DEEPGRAM_API_KEY from env
    tts=ElevenLabsTTS(voice="rachel"),     # ELEVENLABS_API_KEY from env
    system_prompt="You are a helpful assistant.",
    first_message="Hi!",
)

async def main():
    await phone.serve(agent)

asyncio.run(main())

The same agent using namespaced imports:

from getpatter.stt import deepgram
from getpatter.tts import elevenlabs

agent = phone.agent(
    stt=deepgram.STT(endpointing_ms=80),
    tts=elevenlabs.TTS(voice_id="rachel"),
    system_prompt="You are a helpful assistant.",
)

Supported providers

Flat import	Namespaced import	Env var	Install extra
DeepgramSTT	getpatter.stt.deepgram.STT	DEEPGRAM_API_KEY	included
WhisperSTT	getpatter.stt.whisper.STT	OPENAI_API_KEY	included
OpenAITranscribeSTT	getpatter.stt.openai_transcribe.STT	OPENAI_API_KEY	included
CartesiaSTT	getpatter.stt.cartesia.STT	CARTESIA_API_KEY	getpatter[cartesia]
AssemblyAISTT	getpatter.stt.assemblyai.STT	ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY	getpatter[assemblyai]
SonioxSTT	getpatter.stt.soniox.STT	SONIOX_API_KEY	getpatter[soniox]
SpeechmaticsSTT	getpatter.stt.speechmatics.STT	SPEECHMATICS_API_KEY	getpatter[speechmatics]

Model enums

Each provider exports a typed StrEnum of valid model IDs alongside the provider class. They keep model= arguments tab-completable and reject typos at construction time, while still accepting raw strings for forward compatibility:

from getpatter.providers.deepgram_stt import DeepgramModel
from getpatter.providers.assemblyai_stt import AssemblyAIModel
from getpatter.providers.cartesia_stt import CartesiaSTTModel
from getpatter.providers.soniox_stt import SonioxModel

stt = DeepgramSTT(model=DeepgramModel.NOVA_3)

Deepgram

Streaming STT backed by Deepgram’s nova-3 model.

from getpatter import DeepgramSTT

stt = DeepgramSTT()                                      # reads DEEPGRAM_API_KEY
stt = DeepgramSTT(api_key="dg_...", endpointing_ms=80)   # explicit

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
api_key	str | None	None	API key — reads from DEEPGRAM_API_KEY if omitted.
language	str	"en"	BCP-47 language code.
model	str	"nova-3"	Deepgram model ID.
encoding	str	"linear16"	Audio encoding sent to Deepgram.
sample_rate	int	16000	Sample rate in Hz.
endpointing_ms	int	150	Utterance endpointing in milliseconds.
utterance_end_ms	int | None	1000	Grace period after speech ends.
smart_format	bool	False	Smart formatting (numbers, dates, punctuation). Defaults to False because telephony agents feed transcripts straight back into an LLM, where smart-format rewrites can confuse downstream tool-call argument parsing. Pass smart_format=True to opt back in.
interim_results	bool	True	Stream interim transcripts.
vad_events	bool	True	Emit VAD start/end markers.

Whisper (OpenAI)

HTTP-based STT via OpenAI Whisper. Reuses OPENAI_API_KEY.

from getpatter import WhisperSTT

stt = WhisperSTT()                           # reads OPENAI_API_KEY
stt = WhisperSTT(api_key="sk-...", language="es")

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
api_key	str | None	None	API key — reads from OPENAI_API_KEY if omitted.
language	str	"en"	BCP-47 language code.
model	str	"whisper-1"	Whisper model ID.

Whisper on mulaw 8 kHz routinely hallucinates short fillers ("you", ".", "thank you") and emits is_final=true on every chunk regardless of speech. The pipeline drops these by default plus duplicate / sub-500 ms back-to-back finals, but for production prefer OpenAITranscribeSTT (gpt-4o-transcribe) — same OPENAI_API_KEY, ~10× faster, no hallucination floor.

OpenAI Transcribe (gpt-4o-transcribe)

First-class STT for OpenAI’s gpt-4o-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe models — drop-in replacement for WhisperSTT with stronger multilingual quality and significantly lower latency. Reuses OPENAI_API_KEY.

from getpatter import OpenAITranscribeSTT

stt = OpenAITranscribeSTT()                                # reads OPENAI_API_KEY, defaults to gpt-4o-transcribe
stt = OpenAITranscribeSTT(model="gpt-4o-mini-transcribe")  # cheaper variant
stt = OpenAITranscribeSTT(api_key="sk-...", language="es")

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
api_key	str | None	None	API key — reads from OPENAI_API_KEY if omitted.
language	str | None	None	BCP-47 language code. Auto-detect when omitted.
model	str	"gpt-4o-transcribe"	Either "gpt-4o-transcribe" or "gpt-4o-mini-transcribe".
response_format	str	"json"	Pass "verbose_json" to expose segment-level confidence and timestamps.

Cartesia

Streaming STT using Cartesia’s ink-whisper. See Cartesia setup.

from getpatter import CartesiaSTT

stt = CartesiaSTT()                          # reads CARTESIA_API_KEY
stt = CartesiaSTT(api_key="csk_...", language="en", sample_rate=16000)

AssemblyAI

Universal Streaming STT via the AssemblyAI v3 WebSocket API. See AssemblyAI setup.

from getpatter import AssemblyAISTT

stt = AssemblyAISTT()                        # reads ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY
stt = AssemblyAISTT(api_key="aa_...")

Soniox

Real-time STT via Soniox.

from getpatter import SonioxSTT

stt = SonioxSTT()                            # reads SONIOX_API_KEY

Speechmatics

Real-time STT via Speechmatics (Python SDK only — not yet ported to TypeScript).

from getpatter.stt import speechmatics

stt = speechmatics.STT()                     # reads SPEECHMATICS_API_KEY

Missing credentials

Each class raises ValueError at construction time if no API key is resolved from either api_key= or the matching env var:

ValueError: Deepgram STT requires an api_key. Pass api_key='dg_...' or
set DEEPGRAM_API_KEY in the environment.

What’s Next

LLM

Configure the language model.

TTS

Configure speech synthesis.