Livekit

LiveKit is an open-source real-time video, audio, and data infrastructure platform that has gained significant traction for agent-enabled use cases — particularly AI agents that participate in voice and video rooms as first-class participants. The server SDKs and REST API enable agents to create rooms, manage participants, and participate directly in real-time media sessions, which distinguishes LiveKit from video conferencing tools that treat participants as only human users. The open-source foundation and self-hostable architecture add deployment flexibility.

Authentication uses API key and secret pairs for server-side operations and access tokens for participant authentication. The token model follows a JWT pattern where servers generate short-lived, permission-scoped tokens for each participant (human or agent). The dual-credential model is appropriate for real-time media infrastructure where participant tokens must be generated per-session.

Documentation is excellent and reflects strong engineering investment in developer experience. The guides for agent integration are particularly thorough, covering the agent SDK and participation patterns in detail. Teams building AI-enabled real-time applications will find LiveKit's documentation among the best in the real-time media infrastructure space.

The REST API and server SDKs cover room management, participant control, recording (Egress), and stream ingestion (Ingress). The agent participant model is a genuine differentiator — LiveKit agents can join rooms, speak, listen, and observe in real time, enabling use cases like AI meeting assistants, voice agents, and real-time transcription services built as LiveKit participants. The Egress API enables programmatic recording and streaming from rooms.

Reliability is strong for both the managed cloud (LiveKit Cloud) and self-hosted options. Real-time media infrastructure has strict latency requirements that LiveKit's global infrastructure meets for the cloud offering. Self-hosted deployments require careful infrastructure design — media servers need low-latency network access, and poor hosting choices significantly impact call quality.