Playground
The Playground lets you have voice conversations with your agent and see real-time events, state transitions, and action calls before deploying to production.
To start testing, open your agent in Studio and click the Test button in the top-right. Your browser will need microphone access. Click End session when finished—the conversation is automatically saved to your Conversations list for review.
Environment selector
Before starting a conversation, you can select which environment (Development, Staging, or Production) to test with. The selected environment determines which auth connector configuration, secret values, and variable values are used during the conversation.
This lets you verify that each environment is correctly configured without needing to make phone calls through a connector.
Conversation modes
The Playground supports two modes for controlling when you speak:
Voice activity detection (VAD) — Speak naturally. The agent automatically detects when you finish speaking and responds. This simulates real customer conversations.
Push-to-talk — Hold a button to speak, release when done. The agent waits for you to release before responding. Useful in noisy environments or when you need precise control over turn-taking.
Toggle between modes using the microphone controls.
Conversation details
The conversation details panel shows real-time context as the conversation progresses:
- Customer identification: Shows authentication status and user details once verified.
- Detected topic: The current topic the agent identified from the conversation.
- Variables: Current values of conversation variables as they're set or updated.
- Triggered guardrails: Any guardrail violations that occurred during the conversation.
- Compliance & monitoring: Call status, recording, transcription, and summary status. After the call ends, click Open detailed conversation report to review the full conversation.
These details are also available in the conversation detail view after the call ends.
Testing strategies
Beyond happy-path testing, try:
- State transitions: Verify all dialogue states transition correctly and restricted states can't be reached incorrectly
- Actions: Trigger each action and check parameters are sent correctly
- Guardrails: Intentionally say things that should trigger guardrails to verify they activate correctly
- Edge cases: Ask unexpected questions, be deliberately unclear, or make requests outside the agent's scope
- Error handling: Test what happens when APIs fail or required information is missing
- Environments: Test each environment (Development, Staging, Production) to verify the correct credentials, auth connector configs, and variable values are resolved
Event feed
Click the Logs button to open the event feed. It shows technical details about what's happening during the conversation. Common events include:
| Event | Description |
|---|---|
state.transition | Agent moved to a different dialogue state |
function_call | Agent executed an action |
guardrail.triggered | A guardrail rule was activated |
conversation.item.added | New message added to conversation |
input_audio_buffer.speech_started | Voice activity detected (you started speaking) |
input_audio_buffer.speech_stopped | Voice activity ended (you stopped speaking) |
If something unexpected happens, the event feed shows you exactly what the agent was doing—useful for debugging state transitions, action calls, or guardrail behavior.
Log levels
The Minimum log level setting (in Agent > Advanced) controls which events appear:
- Debug: Everything, including internal processing steps. Use when troubleshooting.
- Info (default): Normal events like state transitions, actions, and guardrails.
- Warn: Only warnings and errors.
- Error: Only errors.
Set to Debug when testing in the Playground. For production, Info or Warn is typically sufficient.
Browser audio vs phone
The Playground uses browser audio, which differs from production phone systems:
- Audio quality depends on your microphone
- Network latency differs from phone connections
- Background noise handling may vary
For final validation before going live, test with your actual phone integration (SIP, Twilio, etc.).