# Build a Voice Agent

> Go from zero to a live AI voice agent — quickstart, models, turn-taking, tools, telephony, and go-live.

This path takes you from nothing to a **production AI voice agent**. The agent
answers or places calls. It listens and talks in real time. It calls your
tools. It hands off to a human when necessary. The sidebar now shows only these
steps. Work through them top to bottom with **Next**.

## What you'll build

You will build an agent that:

- Connects to a call over QUIC.
- Runs a speech pipeline or a single speech-to-speech model.
- Detects turns and barge-in.
- Calls tools mid-call.
- Reaches callers over the phone network or the browser.

  1. **See the shape of it**
[Voice overview](/modalities/voice/overview) — the two primitives (calls +
    audio bridge) and the wire model.
  2. **Ship a hello-world agent**
[Managed-cloud quickstart](/modalities/voice/quickstart/managed-cloud) —
    keys, install, and your first call with an agent attached.
  3. **Choose a runtime**
[Agent runtime](/modalities/voice/runtime/overview), then wire providers with
    [BYO ASR / LLM / TTS](/modalities/voice/runtime/byo-asr-llm-tts) (or a
    [speech-to-speech model](/modalities/voice/runtime/byo-speech-to-speech)).
  4. **Make it feel human**
[Turn detection & barge-in](/modalities/voice/concepts/turn-detection) and
    [tool calling](/modalities/voice/runtime/tool-calling).
  5. **Reach real callers**
[Outbound](/modalities/voice/transport-telephony/outbound) and
    [inbound](/modalities/voice/transport-telephony/inbound) calls.
  6. **Put it together & watch it**
[Building voice agents](/modalities/voice/build/voice-agents) end-to-end, then
    [observability](/modalities/voice/observability/overview).

> **TIP:**
> To build a full contact center with human agents and queues, switch to the
>   [Contact Center path](/paths/contact-center).