LiveKit Agents 1.8.6 adds Sarvam TTS and Nabrah STT
Updated LiveKit Agents
Summary
LiveKit Agents 1.8.6, released October 9, 2026, adds Sarvam, Nabrah, Speechify and Cerebras updates plus fixes for voice and IPC.
- Tool
- LiveKit Agents
- Category
- Voice agents
- Date
- Open source
- Yes
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Models
- bulbul:v4-flashqwen-3.8-27b
- Pricing
- Not stated in the sources we cited.
LiveKit published livekit-agents 1.8.6 on October 9, 2026, a release of its open source framework for building realtime voice AI agents. According to the release notes, it adds new speech and model plugins and a long list of fixes to voice, IPC and provider integrations.
Release facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Product | LiveKit Agents (livekit/agents) |
| Version | livekit-agents@1.8.6 |
| Release date | October 9, 2026 |
| License | Apache-2.0, as reported by the GitHub API |
| Where to get it | GitHub release and documentation |
What changed
- New providers and models: the release notes list a Sarvam bulbul:v4-flash TTS, a Nabrah Arabic STT plugin, and qwen-3.8-27b added to CerebrasChatModels.
- Speechify: synthesize() now streams, reuses the HTTP connection and gains prewarm().
- OpenAI: Responses API connections are prewarmed, and temperature/top_p are kept for gpt-5.1+ at reasoning_effort none.
- Voice loop: max_tool_steps is enforced on the realtime tool loop, and only the spoken part of a reply is stored when TTS fails.
- MCP: the server is now told when a tool call is cancelled.
- Startup: the local EOT weights preload can be skipped with one flag and is skipped in spawned job processes.
The release also lists five first-time contributors and many smaller fixes, such as the Soniox websocket authentication migration and an AWS realtime session fix.
Questions
Is LiveKit Agents open source? The documentation says the framework and the LiveKit ecosystem are open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and the GitHub API reports Apache-2.0.
Does this release add MCP changes? The release notes include one MCP fix: telling the server when a tool call is cancelled. No other MCP changes are listed.
Where can I run agents built with it? The documentation says agents can be deployed to LiveKit Cloud or any custom environment.
Browse the LiveKit Agents hub, the voice agents category, or a related release such as Mastra core 1.76.0.
Alternatives
| Tool | License | Pricing note |
|---|---|---|
LiveKit AgentsThis launchLiveKit Agents is an open source framework for building realtime voice AI agents in Python and Node.js. | Apache-2.0 | Not stated |
MastraTypeScript agent framework. Mastra Code is the terminal agent; AgentController is the extracted loop, in @mastra/core 1.47.0 or later. | Open source | Mastra Code and AgentController are announced as open source. No license fee is stated in the posts we cited. |
OpenHandsMIT-licensed project to build and run AI coding agents: start locally, automate workflows, use any model. | MIT | The OpenHands repository is MIT-licensed. Hosted plans are not priced on this page. |
AgnoAgno is an orchestration and service layer for agents, exposing them through a REST API and an MCP server. | Apache-2.0 | Not stated |
adk-pythonAn open-source, code-first Python toolkit for building, evaluating and deploying AI agents. | Apache-2.0 | Not stated |
Questions
What is LiveKit Agents?
Its documentation says the framework lets you add Python or Node.js programs to LiveKit rooms as realtime participants, and the repository describes it as a framework for building realtime voice AI agents.
Is LiveKit Agents open source?
Yes. The documentation says the framework is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and the GitHub API reports Apache-2.0.
Where can agents be deployed?
The documentation says agents can be deployed to LiveKit Cloud or any custom environment.
Filed on Agent Radar. Claims in this note are limited to the sources above.