Twilio behind LiveKit, behind Pipecat, or on its own: three places to put the phone line
· 9 min read
"Add Twilio" sounds like one integration. It is three, and they disagree about the most basic question in a voice agent: who holds the audio. LiveKit takes the call as a SIP trunk and turns the caller into a participant in a room. Pipecat takes it as a WebSocket carrying raw audio frames. And Twilio's own ConversationRelay keeps the audio entirely, and hands your server text.
The previous post compared LiveKit and Pipecat on the seam where a voice agent breaks: a caller talking over the bot. Put a phone line in front of either one and that seam moves, because now there is a third system buffering audio that neither framework controls.