The

agent dev

and

agent start

commands serve different purposes in the development and production lifecycle of a LiveKit agent: •

agent start

: Designed for production environments. It outputs raw JSON data to stdout, making it suitable for logging and monitoring in production settings. •

agent dev

: Meant for development and debugging. It outputs human-friendly, colored logs and supports hot reloading (for Python), allowing real-time code changes without restarting the agent. Key Differences: • Intended Use:

agent start

is for production, while

agent dev

is for development and debugging. • Output:

agent start

provides raw JSON output, while

agent dev

offers colored, formatted logs for easier debugging. • Functionality:

agent dev

includes features like hot reloading to enhance the development workflow. Use

agent start

for production deployments and

agent dev

during development and testing. Sources: Anatomy of an Agent | LiveKit Docs | Worker options | LiveKit Docs | Voice AI quickstart | LiveKit Docs