Agent setup

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?

You can use {{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. GPT-5 models accept only `1`.
Max tokens	Cap on the number of tokens in each response. On GPT-5 models this budget is shared with reasoning tokens.
Reasoning effort	For models that support it. The control offers only the values the selected model accepts, so the options change when you switch models. Higher effort increases latency and cost; stay at the lowest one or two settings for voice.

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 behavior: 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.

Individual nodes can override this with Words to interrupt (override) in the node inspector, including setting it to 0 to stop the caller interrupting that node at all. See Managing nodes.

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.

Extra agent config

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.

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Agent basics

Welcome message

LLM settings

STT settings (speech-to-text)

TTS settings (text-to-speech)

Conversation settings

Timing

Interruption

Backchanneling

Online check

Voicemail detection

Discard pre-welcome utterance

Extra agent config

​Agent basics

​Welcome message

​LLM settings

​STT settings (speech-to-text)

​TTS settings (text-to-speech)

​Conversation settings

​Timing

​Interruption

​Backchanneling

​Online check

​Voicemail detection

​Discard pre-welcome utterance

​Extra agent config

Agent basics

Welcome message

LLM settings

STT settings (speech-to-text)

TTS settings (text-to-speech)

Conversation settings

Timing

Interruption

Backchanneling

Online check

Voicemail detection

Discard pre-welcome utterance

Extra agent config