Session Status

The live status badge that shows what a voice session is doing, and what happens when it ends.

When you're in a voice conversation with a companion, a small pill-shaped status badge appears above the message input, next to a matching audio visualizer. It tells you, in real time, what the session is currently doing - connecting, thinking, speaking, listening, or winding down - so a silence in the conversation never feels like something broke.

Where it lives

The badge appears above the chat input any time a voice session is connecting or active - both on a companion's full chat page and in the embedded chat widget. It disappears once the session has fully ended (after any disconnect countdown finishes) and you're back to a text-only, idle chat.

Every status

The badge shows exactly one state at a time. States are checked in this priority order, so higher ones win if more than one condition is technically true (e.g. the connection is still spinning up while the companion is also "thinking").

Connecting… - shown while the voice session is being established, before you can speak or hear anything yet.
Thinking - shown while the companion is retrieving or reasoning over an answer, before it starts speaking. This isn't one static label; it steps through four sub-states as the underlying search progresses:
- Exploring knowledge… - retrieving candidate information.
- Validating… - verifying what it found.
- Refining search… - retrying the search with adjustments.
- Synthesizing… - assembling the final answer.
- If none of these specific phases is reported, it falls back to a plain Thinking... label.
Are you there? - shown once you and the companion have both gone quiet for a while (see Inactivity and disconnect below). This is a gentle check-in, not a warning yet.
Ending in Xs / Session Ends Soon - shown while the session is about to disconnect. If a numeric countdown is running, the badge counts down second by second ("Ending in 5s", "Ending in 4s", …); otherwise it just reads "Session Ends Soon". See Inactivity and disconnect for exactly when each form appears.
Speaking - shown while the companion's voice is actively playing back to you.
Listening - shown while your microphone is active and the companion is waiting for you to talk.
Idle - the fallback state: the session is connected but nothing is currently happening (nobody is speaking, listening, or thinking).

Each state has its own color: connecting and thinking are indigo, the inactivity check-in is amber, the ending countdown is red, and speaking/listening are violet. Idle is neutral gray. A short sound cue also plays when a "thinking" phase starts, when the "are you there?" check-in appears, and once when the session moves into its ending countdown - voice playback itself is the only "sound" for speaking or listening, so those states don't add an extra cue.

The audio visualizer

Next to the badge text sits a small animated visualizer (a circular "aura" by default) that reflects the same underlying state: a distinct look for connecting, speaking, listening, and idle. It reuses the badge's own color for whichever state is active - amber during the "are you there?" check-in, red during the ending countdown, violet while listening, and indigo otherwise - so the pill reads as one consistent signal rather than two separate widgets. There's no listening/speaking distinction visible in the badge's color while "thinking" or "ending" are active - those states use their own colors regardless of who was last talking.

The visualizer's exact shape (a circular "aura", a waveform, or a bar meter) is a deployment-level setting, not something you choose per conversation - most conversations will only ever see one style.

Inactivity and disconnect

A voice session doesn't hang up the moment it goes quiet - it moves through a short, predictable sequence:

Active - the normal state. Every time you or the companion speaks (or a tool is running), the "last activity" clock resets.
After 30 seconds with no activity from either side, the badge switches to "Are you there?" - a check-in, not a disconnect.
If another 10 seconds pass with still no activity, the companion says a goodbye and the badge moves to the ending state ("Ending in Xs" or "Session Ends Soon").
- In a text-only conversation, once the goodbye message is on screen you get a visible 5-second countdown ("Ending in 5s" down to "Ending in 1s") before the session actually disconnects, so there's time to read it.
- In an audio conversation, the session ends as soon as the goodbye's speech finishes playing - the badge shows "Session Ends Soon" without a numeric countdown, since there's nothing to count down to reading.
- As a safety net, if the goodbye's audio somehow never finishes, the session force-disconnects 60 seconds after entering the ending state regardless.
Speaking or typing again at any point during the "are you there?" check-in cancels it and returns the badge to normal - the ending state, once triggered, runs to completion.

The timer pauses itself while you're busy elsewhere in the chat, so you're never disconnected mid-task:

While an inline guided walkthrough card is active in the transcript.
While a full-screen workflow overlay is open.
While the page embedding the chat widget explicitly pauses it (for example, a host page hiding the widget behind another view).

The timer resumes automatically once whichever of these ends.

When a voice session ends: the feedback prompt

As soon as a voice session ends - for any reason, including the disconnect sequence above - a small feedback dialog appears in its place.

Header: "Hope we made your day a little easier!"

Rating (if the companion has feedback enabled): five stars, click to rate 1–5. Hovering previews the rating before you commit to it.

Feedback textarea (if feedback is enabled): an optional comment field, placeholder text "A quick thought from you helps us do better next time."

Session reference: the session ID is shown as plain text with a copy icon next to it - click it to copy the ID to your clipboard; the icon briefly turns into a checkmark to confirm the copy.

"Create your own" call-to-action: shown only to a signed-out visitor on a public companion's own share page (not inside an embedded widget) - a line reading "Enjoyed this? Build your own companion", linking out to sign-up.

Buttons:

Skip - always available, in the lower-left; closes the dialog without submitting anything.
Submit - appears once you've picked a star rating (and feedback is enabled); sends the rating and comment, shows a brief "Sending..." state, and closes the dialog on success. If it fails to save, you'll see a toast asking you to try again.
Thanks - shown instead of Submit before you've picked a rating (or when feedback is disabled for that companion); simply closes the dialog, the same as Skip.

Dismissing the dialog (Skip or Thanks) never navigates you away - you stay on the same conversation, and the ended session's transcript remains visible in place.

Text & Voice Input - how to start a voice conversation in the first place.