VFA-2026-0006
The caller finishes and the line goes silent for seconds before the agent responds, with no audible acknowledgement in between.
What this is
Filed as Dead-air after caller, the name every report of this mode is collected under.
A failure mode is one named thing that goes wrong on a live call. This record carries every public report of it the atlas has found, in each reporter's own words, and a status that moves only when a re-check stores the artifact behind the move. Status open: reported and still open where it was reported.
Evidence
Every independent public report of this mode, newest first: who wrote it, where, when, what they said, and the link back to the post it came from.
- A reporton GitHub issues2026-07-24
Withdrawn: collected in error: a pull request is a change somebody wrote, not an independent report of a call that went wrong.
first seen 2026-07-24 · fetched 2026-07-25T06:02:03Z · body sha256 b31893140631bd06
...Nothing reaches the transport — on a phone call this is 20–40 s of dead air until the callee says "Hello?". Observed on pipecat 1.6.0 (telephony, auto_mode=True, default buffer settings...
https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat/issues/5110
first seen 2026-07-24 · fetched 2026-07-25T17:50:31Z · body sha256 4891230123214ad1
Each quote is at most 30 words around the reported failure and links to the post it came from. If you wrote one of these and want it off this page, the removal path takes it down within 24 hours.
Hit this one yourself? Add your call to this entry: the stack, the versions, and what the caller heard. It lands as another independent report on this page, with your handle and a link back to what you wrote.
Report another occurrenceThe form is a GitHub issue on the hotato repo. Prefer email? [email protected] reaches a person either way.
What is measurable
Evidence tier: Tier 3 · single mixed channel: one mixed channel still measures what silence shows, and each finding carries its measured confidence.
What it establishes
- The seconds of silence between the caller finishing and the agent answering, timestamped in the call.
- Dead air is visible in a single mixed channel, so this one is measurable on a mono recording as well as a split one.
What your trace settles
- Your latency spans for that turn name where the seconds went: transcription, the model, or speech synthesis.
# The silence between the caller finishing and the agent responding. Printed as DEAD... hotato autopsy ./call.wav
A shipped hotato subcommand maps to this mode, as detector kind long_response_gap. The silence between the caller finishing and the agent responding. Printed as DEAD AIR at 5 seconds or more, and as LATENCY SPIKE between 2 and 5 seconds. hotato is MIT and runs locally. getting started.
Status history
A daily re-check reads every source thread on this page. The status moves when that re-check stores the link, the quote and the date behind the move, so every state on this record is one you can open.
The record has carried one status since it opened: open, reported and still open where it was reported. A move lands here with the link, the quote and the date that show it.
Discussion
Reader discussion of this mode: what fixed it, what did not, and what the record here is missing. It is a conversation, not part of the evidence above. The reports on this page are attributed and linked to their sources, and a comment is a comment.
Open this discussion on GitHubThe record
References
Every link this entry stands on: the post behind each report, and the artifact behind each status move.
- reporthttps://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat/issues/5110 · timofey-TK · GitHub issues · 2026-07-24
Machine surfaces
Removal
If you wrote something quoted on this page and want it gone, one email does it. The removal path takes the quote, the handle and the link off this page, out of the feeds and out of the llms.txt within 24 hours, and tombstones the id so the entry cannot quietly return at a new address.