Silent TTS failover deadlock

acknowledged

4 independent reportsacross 2 sourceson 5 stackslast reported 2026-08-10

What this is

The agent's speech synthesis silently produces no audio even though it logs the turn as spoken, and the safeguard meant to detect and recover from this never triggers, leaving the caller in permanent silence.

Status acknowledged: the thread it was reported in was acknowledged upstream.

Evidence

Pulkit07292026-08-10elevenlabspipecatGitHub issuesgithub.com/…/5271

...no BotStartedSpeakingFrame within 3.0s of pausing frame processing (e.g. a TTS context completed with no audio) — force-resuming ERROR | pipecat.processors.frame_processor:push_error_frame:732 - ElevenLabsTTSService#1 error: ElevenLabsTTSService#1 no BotStartedSpeakingFrame within 3.0s of...

First seen 2026-08-10 · our copy fetched 2026-08-10T13:49:31Z · SHA-256 of that copy begins fa36ab51bc315689… · profile

timofey-TK2026-07-28pipecatGitHub issuesgithub.com/…/5138

...the turn succeeded, and no ErrorFrame is pushed. The bot produces an empty turn (dead air) and nothing is logged, so error accounting, failover wrappers (e.g. ServiceSwitcherStrategy), and observability all...

First seen 2026-07-28 · our copy fetched 2026-07-28T11:03:01Z · SHA-256 of that copy begins dfc36bd7998b0f0b… · profile

ninicp2026-07-23home-assistantpipercommunity.home-assistant.iocommunity.…ent/1018477

...follows. assist_satellite.announce Service call succeeds. Satellite changes responding → idle . LED ring activates. No audio. Tested with preannounce: true as well. Direct tts.speak Tested directly against the Voice PE...

First seen 2026-07-23 · our copy fetched 2026-07-25T18:22:55Z · SHA-256 of that copy begins aa93f24df4bf0fe5… · profile

mannyb2232026-07-14cartesiaelevenlabspipecatGitHub issuesgithub.com/…/5026

...during the incident): - The greeting is "spoken" (transcript logged, usage chars counted) but no audio exists. - With pause_frame_processing, the TTS service pauses its process task after the utterance...

First seen 2026-07-14 · our copy fetched 2026-07-25T17:50:31Z · SHA-256 of that copy begins 4891230123214ad1… · profile

Quotes run to 30 words around the reported failure and link to the post.Add your call to this entry Take a quote down within 24 hours.

What is measurable

Signal	This record stands on its own linked sources. To put a number on your own call, `hotato autopsy ./call.wav` reads a recording you already have and ranks the timing incidents in it.
Establishes	Every report below links to the original post and names the handle that wrote it; the quote is at most 30 words around the reported failure. What else it establishes, and what your own trace settles The status changes only when a re-check stores the evidence link, the quote and the date behind the change. Every timestamp comes from the fetched artifact it describes, recorded with the sha256 of the response body it was read from. What your trace settles Reproducing the mode on your own stack is the next step: the reports below carry the configuration each reporter was running.
Tier	Atlas record: every field on this page traces to a fetched public artifact. hotato is MIT and runs locally, getting started.

Status history

Date	State	What moved it
2026-07-26	openacknowledged	issue closed (completed) evidence dated 2026-07-24

Mode	Status	Shares
TTS word drop context race	fixed	reported on cartesia; reported on elevenlabs; reported on pipecat; reported on github
Endpoint misdetection	acknowledged	reported on cartesia; reported on elevenlabs; reported on pipecat; reported on github
Stream error recovery false success	open	reported on cartesia; reported on elevenlabs; reported on pipecat; reported on github

Discussion

Reader discussion of this mode: what fixed it and what did not. The reports above are attributed and linked; a comment is a comment.

Open this discussion on GitHub

The record

Ids, digests, every link this entry stands on, and how to take a quote down

Atlas id	`VFA-2026-0009`
Mode id	`pat_6956631b1ac909621924b4b6`
Content digest	`sha256:6956631b1ac909621924b4b6346559ddc532da177d58424ea36954566f771367`
First reported	`2026-07-14`
Last reported	`2026-08-10`
First seen by the atlas	`2026-07-14T07:17:44Z`
Last re-checked	`2026-08-10T08:17:10Z`
Reported on	cartesiaelevenlabshome-assistantpipecatpiper
Sources	GitHub issues, community.home-assistant.io
Scope	4 independent public reports across 2 sources. This entry states where the mode has been reported; where else it can occur is what the next report settles.
References	reporthttps://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat/issues/5271 · Pulkit0729 · GitHub issues · 2026-08-10 reporthttps://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat/issues/5138 · timofey-TK · GitHub issues · 2026-07-28 reporthttps://community.home-assistant.io/t/voice-pe-responds-with-led-ring-but-produces-no-audio-announce-tts-and-play-media-all-stay-silent/1018477 · ninicp · community.home-assistant.io · 2026-07-23 reporthttps://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat/issues/5026 · mannyb223 · GitHub issues · 2026-07-14
Machine surfaces	feed.json feed.atom feed.schema.json atlas.llms.txt
Removal	If you wrote something quoted on this page and want it gone, one email to [email protected] 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.