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Listen & intervene

Listen & intervene lets you monitor live conversations and force a handover from the AI agent when needed. Open any ongoing conversation from the Conversations list and you'll see the Human Agent Controls section with a Listen in button.

If your agent uses the GPT Live model, the page follows the conversation as a live transcript. Messages appear as they happen and you can listen to the call. Contact and Variables also update while you follow the call, including when you join part-way through or reload the page. Sensitive values stay redacted, and the saved variables remain available after the call ends. The state and guardrail panels fill in once the call ends. Force handover and End call work the same for every model. If a forced handover can't go ahead, the AI agent stays on the call and Studio tells you why.

Listening in​

The page connects to the conversation as soon as you open it. A status indicator shows your connection state; once it reads Connected, messages appear in real time as the conversation progresses. The rest of the detail page stays visible too — variables, state information, and guardrail triggers all update live alongside the transcript.

Click Listen in to hear the call. You only listen: your microphone stays off and the caller never hears you. For calls on Stellar's own phone connection the audio comes straight from the call, whichever model the agent uses. For calls on other phone connections, such as Twilio or Genesys, listening works for Realtime agents and shows audio visualization bars for the caller and the agent; GPT Live agents on those connections can't be listened to yet, and the page tells you so.

To stop listening without affecting the conversation, click Stop listening. Leaving the page stops listening too. Listening also stops when the AI agent hands the call over or its part of the call ends. If you have call centre access to the call, you keep listening after a handover.

tip

If you scroll up in the transcript to review earlier messages, a New messages indicator appears so you can jump back to the latest activity.

Forcing a handover​

Click Force handover while listening to step in. You don't start speaking on the call yourself: forcing a handover runs the agent's fallback handover action (for example, transferring to a human queue), and the AI agent exits the conversation.

The button is only enabled when the agent has a fallback handover action set on its Advanced tab. If none is configured, Force handover stays disabled, so set one before relying on this feature.

Ending the call​

For ongoing outbound calls, an End call button appears alongside the other controls. Use it to forcibly disconnect a call — useful for runaway or stuck conversations, mistaken or misrouted dials, or abuse-mitigation scenarios.

Clicking End call opens a confirmation dialog. After you confirm, the caller is disconnected immediately and the conversation's completion reason is recorded as Operator terminated, so you can filter for these in the Conversations list.

important

End call is only available on ongoing outbound calls, and only to users with the Voice Admin role (or super admins). The disconnect is immediate and cannot be undone — the caller does not hear a farewell message.

important

Listen & intervene is only available for ongoing conversations. Once a conversation has ended, use the conversation detail page to review the full transcript and recording.

Next steps​