can you know from the livekit server api if the participant of a room is away?

Thanks for reaching out, Sebastián. I'm an AI assistant and I'm here to help. Give me a moment while I research this topic.

yes, like the status of the participant being away

Thank you for your question! The LiveKit server API offers participant states like JOINING, JOINED, ACTIVE, and DISCONNECTED. These help us understand how connected or active a participant is during a session. That said, there isn’t a built-in "away" status at the moment. But don’t worry! You can create your own custom logic to represent an "away" status, perhaps by keeping an eye on participant activity—like if their audio or video is inactive or if they haven’t interacted for a while—and then setting a custom status accordingly. I hope this helps, and please feel free to reach out if you want to explore this further together! Sources: Rooms, participants, and tracks | LiveKit Docs | lib/src/proto/livekit_models.pbenum.dart

but can we know this from the server api (like from outside the room) if participant is away?

Thanks for reaching out! I understand you're looking to determine if a participant is "away" or inactive from outside the room. Currently, the LiveKit server API doesn’t offer a direct way to check that. It provides connection states like JOINING, JOINED, ACTIVE, and DISCONNECTED, which give a general idea of participant status. When it comes to detecting inactivity—such as monitoring audio or user presence—this isn’t something available through the server API. This kind of functionality is built into the LiveKit Agents framework specifically for agent participants, but unfortunately, it’s not accessible for standard participants or external monitoring. If tracking inactivity is important for your use case, a good approach would be to create a custom solution using the client-side SDKs. You can monitor activity there, like audio levels or user interactions, and then send that information back to your backend system. I hope this helps clarify things, and please feel free to ask if you want guidance on setting up such a solution! Sources: Rooms, participants, and tracks | LiveKit Docs | pkg/telemetry/events_test.go | OpenAI Realtime API integration guide | LiveKit Docs | Azure OpenAI Realtime API and LiveKit | LiveKit Docs | Turn detection and interruptions | LiveKit Docs

and how could i "send a message" to an agent if it's connected to a room with the existing mechanisms?

I'm happy to help you send a message to an agent connected to a room! Here are a couple of friendly ways you can do this: • If you're a client participant: You can use the

sendText()

method in the LiveKit client SDKs to send a message to the room. For example, in JavaScript, it looks like this:

await room.localParticipant.sendText('Hello', { topic: 'lk.chat' });

• The agent will receive your message as long as they're subscribed to the same topic (like

lk.chat

). • If you're coming from a server or an external service: You can use the LiveKit server API to send data to the room. Here's a Python example:

send_request = room_proto.SendDataRequest(
    room='room_name',
    data=b'Hello',
    kind=DataPacket.Kind.RELIABLE,
    topic='lk.chat'
)
await lkapi.room.send_data(send_request)

• And if you want, you can even target specific participants — like the agent — by their identity. On the agent's side, they just need to listen on the matching topic through the SDK to receive your messages. If you have any questions or want to walk through this together, feel free to ask! Sources: VoiceAgent/Chat/Send/LocalMessageSender.swift | complex-agents/role-playing/role_playing_frontend/components/session-view.t... | Text and transcriptions | LiveKit Docs

how could i do send to the agent a JSON payload for example?

I don't have the answer you're looking for. You could also try asking your question: • in one of the other Slack channels or • to https://deepwiki.com/livekit/livekit_composite which is trained on all LiveKit source code If you find the answer, please post it here to help others!