---
title: "Pipecat"
description: "Drop Bodhi into the TTS slot of a Pipecat voice agent pipeline."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.navana.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Pipecat

[Pipecat](https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat) builds voice agents as a
pipeline of services. Bodhi provides the text-to-speech stage through the
Python SDK, so synthesis behaves like any other Pipecat TTS service — audio
streams out as it is generated, and an interruption cancels it mid-utterance.

## Install

```bash
pip install "bodhi-api-sdk[tts]"
```

Needs pipecat-ai 1.4 or newer. Verified against 1.4.0, 1.8.1 and 1.11.0.

> **Uninstall bodhi-sdk first**
>
> `bodhi-api-sdk` and the older `bodhi-sdk` both install a module named
> `bodhi`, so they cannot be installed side by side. Run
> `pip uninstall bodhi-sdk` before installing this one, or you end up with a
> mix of the two.

## Add it to a pipeline

```python
import os

from pipecat.pipeline.pipeline import Pipeline
from pipecat.transcriptions.language import Language

from bodhi.integrations.pipecat_tts import BodhiTTSService

tts = BodhiTTSService(
api_key=os.environ["BODHI_API_KEY"],
voice="bhavana",
language=Language.HI,
)

pipeline = Pipeline([
transport.input(),
stt,
context_aggregator.user(),
llm,
tts,
transport.output(),
])
```

`api_key` is the only required argument. Everything else has a default,
including `url`, which points at `wss://tts.navana.ai/v1`.

## Arguments

| Argument | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `api_key` | Yes | Your platform API key, sent as the `X-API-Key` header. |
| `voice` | No | Voice id. Defaults to `default_female`. See [Voices and languages](/text-to-speech/voices). |
| `language` | No | Language to synthesize in, as a Pipecat `Language`. Defaults to Hindi. |
| `sample_rate` | No | Output rate in Hz: `8000`, `16000` or `24000`. Defaults to the pipeline's own, falling back to `24000` when the pipeline asks for a rate Bodhi does not serve. |
| `url` | No | Override the endpoint, usually to point at a different deployment. |
| `settings` | No | Runtime-updatable synthesis settings, below. |

### Settings

Pass these through `BodhiTTSService.Settings`. They can be updated while the
agent is running, and a change reconnects so the new `hello` takes effect.

| Setting | Description |
| --- | --- |
| `voice` | Voice id. A cloned `cv_` voice only works for the language it was cloned under. |
| `language` | Language to synthesize in. |
| `use_fast` | Use the distilled model where one is available. Faster, slightly lower quality. |
| `num_step` | Flow-matching steps, `1` to `100`. Higher is slower and cleaner. Omit for the voice's own default. |
| `guidance_scale` | Classifier-free guidance. Omit for the voice's own default. |

`speed` is deliberately absent: the streaming handshake rejects it. Use
[non-streaming synthesis](/text-to-speech/non-streaming) if you need it.

## How it maps onto Pipecat

Audio arrives as `TTSAudioRawFrame`s between a `TTSStartedFrame` and a
`TTSStoppedFrame`, which is the contract every Pipecat TTS service follows.
Because the frames flow through Pipecat's audio context, an interruption
cancels the utterance in progress rather than letting it play to the end, so
barge-in works the same as with any other provider.

One connection carries the whole session. Sentences are sent as they arrive
from the LLM, and the first audio comes back while the rest is still being
synthesized.

## Related

- [Python SDK](/text-to-speech/streaming) — Using the SDK directly, without Pipecat.
- [Voices and languages](/text-to-speech/voices) — Every voice, and the languages they speak.
- [Speech-to-text with Pipecat](/speech-to-text/pipecat) — The other half of the pipeline.

Source: https://docs.navana.ai/text-to-speech/pipecat/index.mdx