Yes, you can send an initial greeting in realtime models in LiveKit, but there are specific approaches to follow: • Using the

generate_reply()

method: This is the primary way to send an initial greeting. You can provide specific instructions, such as:

await session.generate_reply(
    instructions="Greet the user and offer your assistance."
)

• You can also call

generate_reply()

without specific instructions to let the agent initiate the conversation based on its general settings:

# Generate initial greeting
self.session.generate_reply()

• Why not use

session.say()

? Realtime models do not support the

session.say()

method directly. If you need to use it, you must configure a separate TTS plugin for your session. • Alternative with TTS: Configure your realtime model to use text-only output and include a TTS plugin for more control over the greeting text:

session = AgentSession(
    llm=openai.realtime.RealtimeModel(modalities=["text"]),
    tts=cartesia.TTS()  # Or other TTS plugin
)

Note that when using

generate_reply()

with instructions, the output may not precisely follow the provided script, as the model interprets and responds to the instructions rather than reading them verbatim. Sources: Realtime model integrations | LiveKit Docs | livekit-agents/README.md | telephony/answer_call.py | Agent speech and audio | LiveKit Docs