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Overview

Context updates allow you to dynamically add information to the conversation’s context during voice interactions. This helps provide the AI agent with additional context about the user, conversation state, or UI state.

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Automatic Context Updates

During voice conversations, several types of items are automatically added to the context:
  • User speech: Everything the user says is automatically transcribed and added as message items
  • Agent responses: All agent responses are added to maintain conversation flow
  • Function calls: When agents call tools, the function call details are automatically added
  • Function outputs: Tool results are automatically added by the SDK when tools complete

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Manual Context Updates

Adding context doesn’t trigger an agent response.
You can manually add items to the conversation context using the conversation.item.create event: 
import { useConversation } from "@outspeed/react";

// Inside a React component (useConversation is a React hook)
export default function MyComponent() {
  const conversation = useConversation({});

  const addToContext = async (text: string) => {
    const event = {
      type: "conversation.item.create",
      item: {
        type: "message",
        role: "user",
        content: [
          {
            type: "input_text",
            text,
          },
        ],
      },
    };

    await conversation.send(JSON.stringify(event));
  };

  // rest of component...
}

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Event Notifications

The server sends events for all context operations: 
// Item added (automatic or manual)
conversation.on("conversation.item.created", (event) => {
  console.log("Item added:", event.item);
});

// Item retrieved
conversation.on("conversation.item.retrieved", (event) => {
  console.log("Item retrieved:", event.item);
});

// Item deleted
conversation.on("conversation.item.deleted", (event) => {
  console.log("Item deleted:", event.item_id);
});

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Retrieving Context Items

You can retrieve a specific item from the conversation context by its ID: 
const retrieveEvent = {
  type: "conversation.item.retrieve",
  item_id: "item_12345",
};

await conversation.send(JSON.stringify(retrieveEvent));

// Listen for the response
conversation.on("conversation.item.retrieved", (event) => {
  console.log("Retrieved item:", event.item);
});

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Deleting Context Items

You can remove items from the conversation context: 
const deleteEvent = {
  type: "conversation.item.delete",
  item_id: "item_12345",
};

await conversation.send(JSON.stringify(deleteEvent));

// Listen for confirmation
conversation.on("conversation.item.deleted", (event) => {
  console.log("Deleted item ID:", event.item_id);
});

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Item Structure

Context items follow this structure:
FieldTypeDescription
typestringItem type: “message”, “function_call”, “function_call_output”
rolestringMessage role: “user”, “assistant”, “system”
contentarrayMessage content with type and text
statusstring (optional)Item status: “in_progress”, “completed”

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Context Item Types

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Message Items

Standard conversation messages from users, assistants, or system

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Function Call Items

Tool invocations with parameters (automatically managed)

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Function Output Items

Results from tool executions (automatically managed) The context helps the AI agent maintain awareness of the conversation history and make more informed responses based on the full context of the interaction.