Local transport

The local plugin replaces the cloud edge with your machine’s microphone, speakers, and camera. Useful for local development, desktop apps, and demos where you don’t want to round-trip through a real-time transport.

No Stream account is required for the local edge — but you’ll still need API keys for whichever LLM / STT / TTS plugins you use.

Installation

uv add "vision-agents[local]"

The plugin uses sounddevice for audio I/O and PyAV for video. On some Linux systems you may need to install portaudio separately.

Quick Start

from vision_agents.core import Agent, User
from vision_agents.plugins import deepgram, gemini
from vision_agents.plugins.local import LocalEdge
from vision_agents.plugins.local.devices import (
    select_audio_input_device,
    select_audio_output_device,
    select_video_device,
)

input_device = select_audio_input_device()
output_device = select_audio_output_device()
video_device = select_video_device()

agent = Agent(
    edge=LocalEdge(
        audio_input=input_device,
        audio_output=output_device,
        video_input=video_device,
    ),
    agent_user=User(name="Local AI", id="local-agent"),
    instructions="Keep responses short and conversational.",
    llm=gemini.LLM("gemini-3-flash-preview"),
    tts=deepgram.TTS(),
    stt=deepgram.STT(),
)

The select_* helpers prompt interactively in the terminal. For headless use, instantiate AudioInputDevice, AudioOutputDevice, and CameraDevice directly with a known device index.

Parameters

Name	Type	Default	Description
audio_input	AudioInputDevice	—	Microphone for capturing user audio.
audio_output	AudioOutputDevice	—	Speaker for playing agent audio.
video_input	CameraDevice	None	Camera for capturing user video. None disables video.
video_width	int	640	Output video width in pixels.
video_height	int	480	Output video height in pixels.
video_fps	int	30	Output video frame rate.

When video_input is set, agent video is rendered locally in a tkinter window. Subclass the device classes (AudioInputDevice, AudioOutputDevice, CameraDevice) to swap in alternative backends (e.g. GStreamer).

Next Steps

Build a Voice Agent

Get started with voice

Build a Video Agent

Add video processing