what's the difference between session.close and session.aclose? why does agents-js not support aclose? Is it just async for python's asyncio?

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what's the difference between session.close() and session.shutdown()

Thanks — I’m responding to your question about the difference between

session.close()

and

session.shutdown()

. Short answer •

session.close()

immediately closes the session and disconnects the agent from the room. •

session.shutdown()

is a non-blocking, graceful shutdown that can optionally drain pending work (for example, finish pending speech) before completing. More detail • Use

session.close()

when you want to terminate the session right away and you don’t need to wait for pending tasks to finish. • Use

session.shutdown()

when you want a graceful shutdown that allows the session to finish or drain any in-flight work before it fully stops. If you’d like, tell me which SDK (Python or agents-js) and I can provide a short code example showing the recommended pattern for each method.

agents-js. Why shutdown closes the room after finishing but close() leaves the room open if both are in the session?

Thanks — I’m responding to your question about why, in agents-js, calling

session.shutdown()

closes the room after finishing while

session.close()

leaves the room open when both are used. Short answer • I can’t confirm a documented, implementation-level reason for the exact difference in agents-js from the sources I have. The documentation shows that

shutdown()

is intended for a graceful shutdown (draining/finishing in-flight work) and that `close()`/`aclose()` are immediate closes in other SDKs, but it does not explicitly state that

shutdown()

will remove the room while

close()

will not in agents-js. What we do know from the docs •

shutdown()

is described as a graceful, non-blocking shutdown that can allow pending work to finish. •

close()

in other SDKs (and

aclose()

in Python) performs an immediate close/disconnect. • The Node.js naming convention uses

close()

rather than `aclose()`; JavaScript async methods typically return a Promise and are awaited rather than using an

a

prefix. Why you might observe the behavior you described (possible explanations) • A graceful shutdown can finish tasks or signal room cleanup logic that only runs once pending work completes; that could trigger room-close logic if the agent was the last active participant. • An immediate

close()

may disconnect the agent without running the same draining/cleanup flow, leaving the room alive for other participants or for explicit teardown steps. Next steps so I can help precisely • Could you confirm the SDK version of agents-js you’re using and paste the small snippet showing how you call

shutdown()

and

close()

? (A brief example is enough.) • Do you see any log messages when

shutdown()

runs that indicate cleanup or “room closed” events? • Are there other participants in the room when you call

close()

versus

shutdown()

? With that info I can: • Show a recommended pattern to ensure the room is closed when you want it to be closed. • Suggest a minimal reproduction you can run locally to verify whether the observed difference is deterministic or tied to timing. • If necessary, point to the exact code path or sample that demonstrates the lifecycle behavior once I have the version/snippet. Sources: Job lifecycle | LiveKit Documentation | Agent session | LiveKit Documentation