2026-07-13 02:51 UTCIn-site rewrite5 min readUpdated: 2026-07-13 03:06 UTC

Show HN: Self-hosted voice AI agent for Asterisk/FreePBX

AVA is an open-source, self-hosted voice AI agent for Asterisk/FreePBX, offering quick deployment, multi-agent management, real-time dashboard, and support for multiple AI engines. Recent updates include stability fixes, silence watchdog, and per-agent voice selection.

SourceHacker News AIAuthor: hkjarral

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AVA.mdc

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📖 Table of Contents

🚀 Quick Start

🎉 What's New

🌟 Why Asterisk AI Voice Agent?

✨ Features

🎥 Demo

🛠️ AI-Powered Actions

🩺 Agent CLI Tools

⚙️ Configuration

🏗️ Project Architecture

📊 Requirements

🗺️ Documentation

🤝 Contributing

💬 Community

📝 License

🚀 Quick Start

Get the Admin UI running in 2 minutes.

For a complete first successful call walkthrough (dialplan + transport selection + verification), see:

Installation Guide

Transport Compatibility

Run Pre-flight Check (Required)

Clone repository

git clone https://github.com/hkjarral/AVA-AI-Voice-Agent-for-Asterisk.git cd AVA-AI-Voice-Agent-for-Asterisk

Run preflight with auto-fix (creates .env, generates JWT_SECRET)

sudo ./preflight.sh --apply-fixes

Important: Preflight creates your .env file and generates a secure JWT_SECRET. Always run this first!

Start the Admin UI

Start the Admin UI container

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent up -d --build --force-recreate admin_ui

Access the Dashboard

Open in your browser:

Local: http://localhost:3003

Remote server: http://:3003

Default Login: On first start, a one-time admin password is printed to the container logs. Retrieve it with:

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent logs admin_ui | grep -i password

You must change it at first login. Restrict port 3003 via firewall, VPN, or reverse proxy for production use.

Follow the Setup Wizard to configure your providers and make a test call.

⚠️ Security: The Admin UI is accessible on the network. Restrict port 3003 via firewall, VPN, or reverse proxy for production use.

Verify Installation

GPU users: If you have an NVIDIA GPU for local AI inference, see docs/LOCAL_ONLY_SETUP.md for the GPU compose overlay (docker-compose.gpu.yml) before building.

Start ai_engine (required for health checks)

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent up -d --build ai_engine

Check ai_engine health

curl http://localhost:15000/health

Expected: {"status":"healthy"} ("degraded" is also possible if a subsystem is unhealthy)

View logs for any errors

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent logs ai_engine | tail -20

Connect Asterisk

The wizard will generate the necessary dialplan configuration for your Asterisk server.

Transport selection is configuration-dependent (not strictly “pipelines vs full agents”). Use the validated matrix in:

docs/Transport-Mode-Compatibility.md

🔧 Advanced Setup (CLI)

For users who prefer the command line or need headless setup.

Option A: Interactive CLI

./install.sh agent setup

Note: Legacy commands agent init, agent quickstart, agent doctor, agent troubleshoot, and agent demo remain as hidden compatibility aliases. New workflows should use the visible commands documented in docs/CLI_TOOLS_GUIDE.md.

Option B: Manual Setup

Configure environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your API keys

Start services

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent up -d

Configure Asterisk Dialplan

Add this to your FreePBX (extensions_custom.conf):

[from-ai-agent] exten => s,1,NoOp(Asterisk AI Voice Agent) ; AI_AGENT selects an operator-managed agent by slug. same => n,Set(AI_AGENT=sales-agent) ; Optional: override that agent's configured provider/pipeline for this call. ; same => n,Set(AI_PROVIDER=google_live) same => n,Stasis(asterisk-ai-voice-agent) same => n,Hangup()

Notes:

Use AI_AGENT to select an operator-managed agent. Its configured target is authoritative unless AI_PROVIDER is intentionally set as a per-call override.

Generate a current snippet with agent dialplan --agent .

See docs/FreePBX-Integration-Guide.md for channel variable precedence and examples.

Test Your Agent

Health check:

agent check

View logs:

docker compose -p asterisk-ai-voice-agent logs -f ai_engine

🎉 What's New

v7.3.2 — stabilization release 🛡️

v7.3.2 is a stabilization-only patch release built from the supervised AudioSocket and ExternalMedia validation cycle.

No new providers — scope is limited to reliability, deployment safety, documentation, and contributor-facing CI.

Grok ExternalMedia repaired — clean barge-in, cancelled-output quarantine, named-instance runtime inheritance, complete replacement turns, and exact inactivity announcements through xAI force_message.

AudioSocket and modular pipelines hardened — terminal playback, pipeline producer ownership, talk-detect echo, and inactivity-grace regressions are covered by focused tests and supervised calls.

Updater and provider-failure recovery hardened — safer ownership, rollback/stash handling, readiness validation, and an opt-in dialplan redirect.

PR quality gates expanded — Admin backend/frontend checks and CLI cross-compilation now run before merge.

Release evidence and remaining gates are tracked in the v7.3.2 validation matrix.

v7.3.1 — Silence watchdog & safe call endings ☎️

AVA now protects silent calls and finishes every terminal message before disconnecting.

30-second inbound inactivity protection by default — AVA asks “Are you still there?”, waits 15 seconds for a reply, then speaks a configurable final warning and ends the call. Outbound agents remain opt-in.

The agent keeps its configured voice — check-ins and final warnings are synthesized by the active Google Live, OpenAI Realtime, Grok, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, local full-agent, or pipeline voice.

Transport-safe hangup — watchdog and hangup_call farewells drain AudioSocket or ExternalMedia/RTP streaming buffers and ARI file playback before ARI disconnects the caller. Fixed sleeps no longer clip long final sentences.

Deepgram and ElevenLabs lifecycle fixes — Deepgram control frames no longer split greetings, and ElevenLabs response-completion plus hosted-silence handling keeps AVA's watchdog authoritative.

Global and per-agent controls — configure defaults under Advanced Settings → Voice Activity Detection → Caller Inactivity, then optionally override them per agent. Call History labels watchdog endings as No input timeout.

See Caller inactivity configuration, ElevenLabs setup, and the full v7.3.1 changelog.

v7.3.0 — Per-agent voices 🎙️

Voice now belongs to agents. Configure one provider, create multiple agents that share it — each with its own voice.

Provider-aware voice picker in the Agent form: a dropdown of OpenAI's 10 GA voices, suggestions + custom clone IDs for Grok, Google Live's 30 prebuilt voices, Deepgram's Aura models — the control adapts to the agent's selected AI Engine.

Safe by default — the provider-level voice becomes the default voice; agents without one behave exactly as before. Unrecognized values (OpenAI/Google/Deepgram catalogs are validated) log a warning and fall back — a bad voice value never fails a call.

Observable — every call logs the resolved voice and its source, and Call History shows "Voice: marin (from agent)" per call.

Agent voice changes apply instantly — no engine restart.

Thanks @foytech for seeding this feature (#497). Full guide: docs/VOICE_SELECTION.md.

v7.2.0 — Live-status dashboard 📡

Real-time system status for the Admin UI — pushed, not polled.

Live-status hub — a single /api/live-status snapshot endpoint plus an SSE stream (/api/live-status/stream) aggregates AI Engine health, Local AI connectivity, active sessions, audio directories, platform checks, and Asterisk ARI into one normalized status feed.

Push-first — ai_engine and local_ai_server push their own readiness to the Admin UI (POST /api/live-status/publish, authenticated with LIVE_STATUS_PUSH_TOKEN), so the dashboard converges in sub-second time after a restart instead of waiting on staggered polls. Legacy /api/system/* probes remain as fallback/enrichment.

Configurable — LIVE_STATUS_POLL_INTERVAL_SECONDS (default 30 s, min 2 s) and LIVE_STATUS_INITIAL_PROBE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS (default 2 s), read live from .env.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

v7.1.1 — Dashboard reliability & Admin UI polish 🛠️

A focused quality release across the Admin UI — no call-path changes.

Dashboard reliability — the Asterisk status pill no longer flaps on a transient ARI blip: it reads the engine's authoritative, reconnect-supervised ARI state and applies hysteresis. The system endpoints the Dashboard polls every 5s no longer block the admin event loop, the heaviest is TTL-cached, polling backs off on errors, failed polls surface in the error banner, and a single bad poll no longer flashes cards to "Loading…".

No more "Loading configuration…" flash — ~11 config pages now seed from a shared stale-while-revalidate cache of the config document, so revisiting a settings page is instant.

Accessibility (WCAG AA) — form labels programmatically associated with inputs, a focus-trapping modal, a navigation landmark + "skip to content" link, accessible names on icon-only buttons, non-colour status cues on the topology, a visible dark-mode toggle on-state, and light-mode contrast fixes. Debug console.logs (including one that leaked the auth token to the browser console) were removed.

Prompt editor — configured tool names are colour-coded by their in-call status (enabled / global / not-enabled) as you type.

Fix (#436) — a canonical google_live: { type: full } provider can be edited and saved again.

Full notes in CHANGELOG.md.

v7.0.0 — the Agents release 🎯

The biggest release yet: manage your AI agents from the Admin UI, not a config file.

🤖 Agents tab — create, edit, and manage agents in the UI. Start from a template (receptionist, after-hours, appointment booker, and more), set the prompt and provider, and copy a ready-to-paste dialplan snippet. (Voice is configured on the provider, not per agent.)

📊 Multi-agent dashboard — live KPIs (active agents, active calls, calls routed, transfers), per-agent stats, and routing breakdowns at a glance.

☎️ New AI_AGENT dialplan variable — route a call to an agent by name. Your existing AI_CONTEXT dialplans keep working unchanged.

🔄 Automatic migration — your existing contexts move into a local agents database on first start. Nothing to do, and rollback is one command.

🔒 Security hardening — no more admin/admin: a one-time admin password is generated and must be changed at first login. Config exports no longer bundle your .env by default.

⚠️ Major release — please read the Upgrade Notes befo

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