With no node or transition selected, the inspector shows the Agent setup tab. This is where you configure everything that applies to the agent as a whole, rather than to a specific node.
Agent Basics
The first collapsible section contains top-level agent settings.
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Agent name | The display name for this agent in the Bolna dashboard. |
| Start node | The entry-point node for every new call. Equivalent to clicking Make start node on a node in the canvas. |
| Welcome message | The first thing the agent says when a call connects, before any node is active. Supports {variable} tokens — see Variables. |
| Global prompt | System-level prompt applied to every LLM call in this agent. Use it for persona, language rules, guardrails, and pronunciation rules. This is the agent_information field in the JSON schema. |
Welcome message
The first thing the agent says when a call connects, before any node is active.
Hi there! Thanks for calling Acme support. How can I help you today?
{variable} tokens in the welcome message. Any tokens here are discovered by the Variables panel so you can set test values.
LLM settings
Controls the response LLM used across all nodes that don’t override it individually.
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Provider | The LLM provider (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google). |
| Model | Specific model name. Choose from the dropdown of supported models for the selected provider. |
| Temperature | Controls response randomness. Lower values (0.0–0.5) produce consistent, predictable output. Higher values (0.8–1.5) produce more varied responses. |
| Max tokens | Cap on the number of tokens in each response. |
| Reasoning effort | For models that support it: minimal, low, medium, or high. Higher effort increases latency and cost; use minimal or low for most voice use cases. |
Individual nodes can override these settings in their LLM overrides section. The agent-level settings serve as the default for any node that doesn’t override them.
STT settings (speech-to-text)
Configures the transcriber that converts the caller’s voice to text.
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Transcriber | Select from supported STT providers. |
| Advanced config | JSON editor for provider-specific settings (e.g. language hints, keywords, punctuation). |
TTS settings (text-to-speech)
Configures the voice synthesis that converts the agent’s text responses to audio.
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Language | The primary language for voice synthesis. |
| Advanced config | JSON editor for synthesizer-specific settings (voice ID, speaking rate, pitch, etc.). |
Conversation settings
Controls call-level behaviour: timeouts, silence handling, backchanneling, and special modes.
Timing
| Setting | Description | Default |
|---|
| Welcome message delay | Seconds to wait after the call connects before playing the welcome message. | 0 |
| Hang up after silence | Seconds of total silence before the agent ends the call. | — |
| Call terminate | Hard timeout in seconds for the entire call. | — |
Interruption
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Number of words for interruption | Minimum words the user must speak before the agent considers it an interruption and stops speaking. Lower values make the agent more interruptible. |
Backchanneling
Backchanneling plays short filler phrases (“Mm-hmm”, “I see”) while the agent is processing, so the caller doesn’t experience dead silence.
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Enabled | Toggle backchanneling on or off. |
| Start delay | Seconds to wait before the first backchannel phrase plays. |
| Message gap | Minimum seconds between backchannel phrases. |
Online check
Periodically checks whether the user is still on the line.
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Enabled | Toggle online check on or off. |
| Trigger after | Seconds of silence before checking if the user is still there. |
| Check message | The phrase the agent says to check (e.g. “Are you still there?”). Supports multilingual object ({"en": "...", "hi": "..."}). |
Voicemail detection
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Enabled | Toggle voicemail detection on or off. |
| Detection duration | Seconds to wait while determining whether the call went to voicemail. |
Discard pre-welcome utterance
When enabled, any speech detected before the welcome message finishes playing is discarded. Useful for outbound calls where the recipient often says “Hello?” before the agent starts speaking.
An advanced JSON editor for any agent configuration keys not covered by the fields above. Changes here are merged into agent_config when the agent is saved. Use this for platform-specific settings not yet exposed in the UI.
Only keys the platform knows about are written on save. Unknown keys are dropped. Check the API reference for a full list of accepted fields. 
