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

# Agent Speech

> Control how readily your agent pauses for callers and how quickly it responds after they stop talking.

Two behaviors control how your agent shares the conversation:

* **Interruptibility** governs what happens while the agent is speaking: how readily it yields when the caller talks over it. This is a setting you choose.
* **Resumption** governs what happens after the caller finishes: how quickly the agent takes its turn. This is adaptive: the agent measures each caller's pace and matches it automatically. There is nothing to configure.

## Agent pauses

When a caller makes a sound while the agent is speaking, the agent does not cut off at the first sound. It keeps talking for a brief moment while it works out what the caller is doing, then reacts:

| The caller says                            | What it is             | What the agent does                                                      |
| :----------------------------------------- | :--------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| "Uh-huh."                                  | A short acknowledgment | Keeps talking. No pause at all.                                          |
| "Stop for a second."                       | A short interruption   | Finishes its current word, stops, and responds.                          |
| "Wow, that is really, really interesting." | A long acknowledgment  | Pauses while the caller speaks, then picks up exactly where it left off. |
| "Hey, I have a question about that."       | A long interruption    | Finishes its current word, stops, and responds.                          |

Two things hold in every case:

* The agent always stops at a word boundary. It never cuts off mid-word.
* Acknowledgments never derail the agent. Short ones are spoken through; long ones get a pause, and the agent picks up where it stopped.

What counts as a "short" utterance scales with the interruptibility setting: an easy-to-interrupt agent pauses for shorter caller utterances, while a difficult-to-interrupt agent holds through more.

## Interruptibility

How readily the agent yields the floor when the caller speaks over it. Set with the `interruptibility` field (integer, `0`-`4`, default `2`).

| Setting             | API value | Caller experience                                                                                                       |
| :------------------ | :-------- | :---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Always interrupt    | `4`       | Any caller speech stops the agent. Nothing is treated as an acknowledgment; every utterance gets a stop and a response. |
| Easy                | `3`       | Yields quickly. Only the briefest acknowledgments are spoken through.                                                   |
| Balanced            | `2`       | Default. Short acknowledgments do not stop the agent; real interruptions do.                                            |
| Difficult           | `1`       | Holds the turn longer and treats more caller speech as acknowledgment. Good for noisy lines and chatty listeners.       |
| Block interruptions | `0`       | The agent ignores caller speech entirely while talking and always finishes what it is saying.                           |

## Adaptive resumption

<Note>
  Adaptive resumption is rolling out and may not yet be active in your environment.
</Note>

How quickly the agent responds once the caller stops talking is measured per caller, per call. The agent tracks the caller's own rhythm — how long their speech runs and how long their mid-thought pauses last — and adjusts how long it waits before taking its turn:

* A caller who speaks quickly, without hesitating, gets near-instant responses.
* A caller who speaks deliberately, pausing mid-sentence to think or to read out a number, gets an agent that waits out those pauses instead of jumping in, up to about two and a half seconds.
* A caller who changes pace mid-call is matched within about fifteen seconds.

The adaptation runs continuously in both directions: slowing down earns patience, and speeding back up restores snappy responses.

## Where to set interruptibility

* **Send Call API**: pass `interruptibility` in the [`/v1/calls`](/api-v1/post/calls) request body. It applies to the whole call.
* **Inbound numbers**: the same field on your inbound number configuration.
* **Pathways**: per node, in the node inspector under Advanced options. A node's setting applies only while that node is active; other nodes use the agent's own setting.

## Choosing values

| Symptom                                                       | Try                                                |
| :------------------------------------------------------------ | :------------------------------------------------- |
| The agent talks over callers who want to say something        | Easy interruptibility, or Always interrupt         |
| The agent stops for background noise or brief acknowledgments | Difficult interruptibility, or Block interruptions |

Response timing needs no tuning: an agent that seems to jump in on a hesitant caller will settle within a few turns as the measurement catches up to the caller's pace.