Tools & Policy

Voice exposes a narrow OpenAI Realtime function-tool surface. The schemas live in agent/voice/tools.py, but the implementation reuses the same app-owned services as the text runtime: memory control, grounded lookup, crisis resources, therapeutic response style guidance, and guided exercises.

Tool surface

Tool	Mode	Purpose
wait_for_user	Incognito + persistent	Stay quiet for silence, background audio, side conversations, or speech not addressed to OpenCouch.
show_memory_status	Incognito + persistent	Explain whether memory is enabled and report saved-memory counts.
load_therapeutic_response_skill	Incognito + persistent	Load prompt-local therapeutic response-style guidance for ordinary replies.
answer_grounded_lookup	Incognito + persistent	Answer explicit current, official, source-backed, or externally verifiable requests from grounded results.
lookup_crisis_resources	Incognito + persistent	Find verified crisis resources for the current crisis turn.
get_crisis_support_template	Incognito + persistent	Load a deterministic crisis-response safety scaffold to shape the crisis reply.
list_guided_exercise_skills	Incognito + persistent	List metadata-only guided exercises available for the current channel and approach.
load_guided_exercise_skill	Incognito + persistent	Load the runtime-selected guided-exercise skill block for a step/action.
record_guided_exercise_progress	Incognito + persistent	Validate a voice exercise progress update and persist the runtime-owned exercise_state delta.
show_saved_memory	Persistent only	Show concise saved facts, session summaries, and procedural rules.
recall_saved_memory	Persistent only	Query the user's saved memory for facts and session arcs relevant to the current turn.
save_response_preference	Persistent only	Save an explicit response-style or memory-use preference.
set_proactive_memory_recall	Persistent only	Enable or disable proactive memory recall.
prepare_memory_deletion_by_index	Persistent only	Stage deletion of a visible saved-memory item by kind and one-based index.
prepare_memory_deletion_by_query	Persistent only	Stage deletion of a saved-memory item selected by a query.
confirm_memory_deletion	Persistent only	Confirm and perform a pending deletion.
cancel_memory_deletion	Persistent only	Cancel a pending deletion.

The tool surface is filtered by memory mode: persistent sessions expose all 17 tools, while incognito sessions expose only the 9 mode-independent tools above. Persistent-only tools are rejected in incognito voice mode. The one exception is show_memory_status, which returns an explicit incognito status so the assistant can explain that durable memory is off.

Intent gate on memory mutations

Beyond mode filtering, the four destructive or preference-changing memory tools — set_proactive_memory_recall, save_response_preference, prepare_memory_deletion_by_index, and prepare_memory_deletion_by_query — carry an additional intent gate. Each must include a user_quote argument, and the backend only lets the mutation proceed if that quote matches something the user actually said in a recent turn (within the last few turns, above a minimum length). If the model cannot cite a matching user utterance, the call is blocked.

This is an anti-misfire guard for a hands-free surface: in a free-flowing speech loop there is no explicit confirm button, so the gate prevents the model from saving a preference or staging a deletion the user never requested.

Realtime-owned turns

Realtime server VAD owns turn detection and response creation for live voice sessions. The session configuration enables automatic response creation after finalized user speech, so the browser does not call a backend policy endpoint before each response.

The backend still owns the app-specific boundaries:

• Realtime function tools call POST /api/voice/realtime/tools.
• Tools that require app data, safety resources, memory state, grounded lookup, or guided-exercise state execute through shared backend services.
• wait_for_user is a no-op signal for silence, background audio, side conversations, or speech not addressed to OpenCouch. Its function output is returned to Realtime without asking the model to continue.
• When the browser records a completed exchange through POST /api/voice/realtime/turn, the backend infers route and response-style metadata from the actual tool calls that happened in the Realtime session.

Crisis and factual lookups

Two cases should be treated as hard boundaries:

• Crisis turns that need specific resources must use lookup_crisis_resources; the assistant must not invent hotline names, phone numbers, URLs, or local availability.
• Factual/current/source-backed requests must use answer_grounded_lookup; the assistant should answer only from the tool result.

Provider failures surface as tool failures rather than silent fallback answers. Verified-but-empty lookup cases return explicit status values so the user gets "I could not verify that" instead of invented content.

Guided exercises

Voice uses the shared guided-exercise catalog but filters to exercises that are suitable for spoken delivery. There are 13 total exercises and 10 voice-supported exercises today:

• grounding_5_4_3_2_1
• grounding_box_breathing
• grounding_stop_technique
• grounding_muscle_relaxation
• thought_work_continuum
• behavioral_activation_tiny_action
• defusion_values_compass
• self_compassion_break
• emotion_regulation_improve
• emotion_regulation_gratitude

The voice prompt explicitly tells the model not to default to 5-4-3-2-1 grounding unless that exact runtime-selected skill has been provided. Unlike the text runtime, voice Realtime does not run the full text GuidedExerciseSkillService lifecycle before speaking, so it retains a voice-specific record_guided_exercise_progress tool. That tool validates the expected skill/step server-side and persists only the runtime-computed exercise_state delta.

Key files

File	Purpose
agent/voice/tools.py	Realtime function-tool schemas and dispatcher.
agent/voice/turn_metadata.py	Route and response-style metadata inference from recorded Realtime tool calls.
agent/voice/policy.py	Compact Realtime instruction policy for one voice session.
agent/tools/	Shared tool implementations used by both text and voice.
agent/skills/guided_exercises/catalog/registry.py	Shared exercise catalog and voice filtering.