Deepgram Core Workflow B: Live Streaming Transcription

Examples

Open a development streaming session with a non-sensitive test utterance, verify connection/authentication, partial/final transcript state, timeout, and close behavior. Enforce the session's data/consent policy and log a correlation ID plus state transitions—not audio bytes, API keys, or full participant speech.

Overview

Real-time streaming transcription using Deepgram's WebSocket API. The SDK manages the WebSocket connection via listen.live(). Covers microphone capture, interim/final result handling, speaker diarization, UtteranceEnd detection, auto-reconnect, and building an SSE endpoint for browser clients.

Prerequisites

• @deepgram/sdk installed, DEEPGRAM_API_KEY configured
• Audio source: microphone (via Sox/rec), file stream, or WebSocket audio from browser
• For mic capture: sox installed (apt install sox / brew install sox)

Instructions

Step 1: Basic Live Transcription

import { createClient, LiveTranscriptionEvents } from '@deepgram/sdk';

const deepgram = createClient(process.env.DEEPGRAM_API_KEY!);

const connection = deepgram.listen.live({
  model: 'nova-3',
  language: 'en',
  smart_format: true,
  punctuate: true,
  interim_results: true,      // Show in-progress results
  utterance_end_ms: 1000,     // Silence threshold for utterance end
  vad_events: true,           // Voice activity detection events
  encoding: 'linear16',       // 16-bit PCM
  sample_rate: 16000,         // 16 kHz
  channels: 1,                // Mono
});

// Connection lifecycle events
connection.on(LiveTranscriptionEvents.Open, () => {
  console.log('WebSocket connected to Deepgram');
});

connection.on(LiveTranscriptionEvents.Close, () => {
  console.log('WebSocket closed');
});

connection.on(LiveTranscriptionEvents.Error, (err) => {
  console.error('Deepgram error:', err);
});

// Transcript events
connection.on(LiveTranscriptionEvents.Transcript, (data) => {
  const transcript = data.channel.alternatives[0]?.transcript;
  if (!transcript) return;

  if (data.is_final) {
    console.log(`[FINAL] ${transcript}`);
  } else {
    process.stdout.write(`\r[interim] ${transcript}`);
  }
});

// UtteranceEnd — fires when speaker pauses
connection.on(LiveTranscriptionEvents.UtteranceEnd, () => {
  console.log('\n--- utterance end ---');
});

Step 2: Microphone Capture with Sox

import { spawn } from 'child_process';

function startMicrophone(connection: any) {
  // Sox captures from default mic: 16kHz, 16-bit signed LE, mono
  const mic = spawn('rec', [
    '-q',              // Quiet (no progress)
    '-r', &

Deepgram Cost Tuning

Prerequisites

• An aggregate usage/cost baseline, approved budget owner, delivery/quality SLO, and data/retention policy.
• Synthetic fixtures and a reversible optimization/change record.

Examples

Compare aggregate duration, model, concurrency, and error data in a development/staging workload, change one approved model or batching parameter, and observe the quality/latency/cost tradeoff. Revert if quality or reliability drops; do not reduce retention, privacy, or consent safeguards merely to lower spend.

Overview

Optimize Deepgram API costs through smart model selection, audio preprocessing to reduce billable minutes, usage monitoring via the Deepgram API, budget guardrails, and feature-aware cost estimation. Deepgram bills per audio minute processed.

Deepgram Pricing (2026)

Add-on costs:

• Diarization: +$0.0044/min
• Multichannel: billed per channel

Instructions

Step 1: Budget-Aware Transcription Service

import { createClient } from '@deepgram/sdk';

interface BudgetConfig {
  monthlyLimitUsd: number;
  warningThreshold: number;  // 0.0-1.0 (e.g., 0.8 = warn at 80%)
  costPerMinute: number;     // Base STT cost
}

class BudgetAwareTranscriber {
  private client: ReturnType<typeof createClient>;
  private config: BudgetConfig;
  private monthlySpendUsd = 0;
  private monthlyMinutes = 0;

  constructor(apiKey: string, config: BudgetConfig) {
    this.client = createClient(apiKey);
    this.config = config;
  }

  async transcribe(source: any, options: any) {
    // Estimate cost before transcription
    const estimatedCost = this.estimateCost(options);
    const projected = this.monthlySpendUsd + estimatedCost;

    if (projected > this.config.monthlyLimitUsd) {
      throw new Error(
        `Budget exceeded: $${this.monthlySpendUsd.toFixed(2)} spent, ` +
        `$${this.config.monthlyLimitUsd} limit`
      );
    }

    if (projected > this.config.monthlyLimitUsd * this.config.warn

Deepgram Data Handling

Prerequisites

• Data classification, consent/legal basis, approved retention/deletion policy, storage boundary, and named data owner.
• A redaction/logging policy and an incident route for recording or transcript exposure.

Examples

Process a licensed development fixture through the approved region/storage route, verify its retention/deletion behavior, and record only a correlation ID and policy result. Do not put recordings, transcripts, participant identifiers, or storage URLs into test logs; on accidental exposure, restrict access and follow the data incident procedure.

Overview

Best practices for handling audio and transcript data with Deepgram. Covers Deepgram's built-in redact parameter for PII, secure audio upload with encryption, transcript storage patterns, data retention policies, and GDPR/HIPAA compliance workflows.

Data Privacy Quick Reference

Deepgram's data policy: Audio is processed in real-time and not stored. Transcripts are not retained unless you use Deepgram's optional storage features.

Instructions

Step 1: Deepgram Built-in PII Redaction

import { createClient } from '@deepgram/sdk';

const deepgram = createClient(process.env.DEEPGRAM_API_KEY!);

// Deepgram redacts PII directly during transcription
const { result } = await deepgram.listen.prerecorded.transcribeUrl(
  { url: audioUrl },
  {
    model: 'nova-3',
    smart_format: true,
    redact: ['pci', 'ssn'],  // Credit cards + SSNs -> [REDACTED]
  }
);

// Output: "My card is [REDACTED] and SSN is [REDACTED]"
console.log(result.results.channels[0].alternatives[0].transcript);

// For maximum privacy, redact all numbers:
// redact: ['pci', 'ssn', 'numbers']

Step 2: Application-Level PII Redaction

// Additional redaction patterns beyond Deepgram's built-in
const piiPatterns: Array<{ name: string; pattern: RegExp; replacement: string }> = [
  { name: 'email',    pattern: /\b[\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.\w{2,}\b/g, replacement: '[EMAIL]' },
  { name: 'phone',    pattern: /\b(\+?\d{1,3}[-.\s]?)?\(?\d{3}\)?[-.\s]?\d{3}[-.\s]?\d{4}\b/g, repla

Deepgram Debug Bundle

Examples

For a streaming failure, collect the correlation ID, environment, client/SDK version, model, connection state transitions, redacted status, and timestamp. Review the bundle for keys, audio bytes, transcript text, participant identifiers, and storage URLs before sharing; reproduce with a licensed fixture and use the approved support/incident route.

Current State

!node --version 2>/dev/null || echo 'Node.js not installed' !npm list @deepgram/sdk 2>/dev/null | grep deepgram || echo '@deepgram/sdk not found' !python3 --version 2>/dev/null || echo 'Python not installed'

Overview

Collect comprehensive debug information for Deepgram support tickets. Generates a sanitized bundle with environment info, API connectivity tests, audio analysis, request/response logs, and a minimal reproduction script. All API keys are automatically redacted.

Prerequisites

• Deepgram API key configured
• ffprobe available for audio analysis (part of ffmpeg)
• Sample audio that reproduces the issue

Instructions

Step 1: Environment Collection Script

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
BUNDLE_DIR="deepgram-debug-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)"
mkdir -p "$BUNDLE_DIR"

# System info
{
  echo "=== System ==="
  uname -a
  echo ""
  echo "=== Node.js ==="
  node --version 2>/dev/null || echo "Not installed"
  echo ""
  echo "=== @deepgram/sdk ==="
  npm list @deepgram/sdk 2>/dev/null || echo "Not installed"
  echo ""
  echo "=== Python ==="
  python3 --version 2>/dev/null || echo "Not installed"
  pip show deepgram-sdk 2>/dev/null || echo "Not installed"
} > "$BUNDLE_DIR/environment.txt"

Step 2: API Connectivity Tests

# Test REST API
{
  echo "=== REST API Test ==="
  echo "Timestamp: $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)"
  echo ""
  echo "--- Project listing ---"
  curl -s -w "\nHTTP: %{http_code} | Time: %{time_total}s\n" \
    'https://api.deepgram.com/v1/projects' \
    -H "Authorization: Token $DEEPGRAM_API_KEY" 2>&1 | \
    sed "s/$DEEPGRAM_API_KEY/REDACTED/g"
  echo ""
  echo "--- Transcription test (Bueller sample) ---"
  curl -s -w "\nHTTP: %{http_code} | Time: %{time_total}s\n" \
    -X POST 'https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova-3&smart_format=true' \
    -H "Authorization: Token $DEEPGRAM_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"url":"https://static.deepgram.com/examples/Bueller-Life-moves-702702706.wav"}' 2>&1 | \
    sed 

Deepgram Deploy Integration

Examples

Deploy a versioned integration to staging with a scoped secret reference and a short licensed fixture, then verify health, timeout/retry behavior, redacted metrics, and the rollback command. Promote through a controlled production canary only after data/consent and quality checks pass; do not deploy a key or audio fixture in the manifest.

Overview

Deploy Deepgram transcription services to Docker, Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, and Google Cloud Run. Includes production Dockerfile, K8s manifests with secret management, serverless handlers for event-driven transcription, and health check patterns.

Prerequisites

• Working Deepgram integration (tested locally)
• Production API key in secret manager
• Container registry access (Docker Hub, ECR, GCR)
• Target platform CLI installed

Instructions

Step 1: Production Dockerfile

# Multi-stage build for minimal production image
FROM node:20-alpine AS builder

WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --production=false
COPY tsconfig.json ./
COPY src/ ./src/
RUN npm run build

FROM node:20-alpine AS runtime

# Security: non-root user
RUN addgroup -g 1001 -S app && adduser -S app -u 1001
WORKDIR /app

# Production dependencies only
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --production && npm cache clean --force

# Copy built application
COPY --from=builder /app/dist ./dist

# Health check (tests Deepgram connectivity)
HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=10s --start-period=5s --retries=3 \
  CMD wget -q --spider http://localhost:3000/health || exit 1

USER app
EXPOSE 3000

CMD ["node", "dist/server.js"]

Step 2: Docker Compose

# docker-compose.yml
version: '3.8'

services:
  deepgram-service:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - DEEPGRAM_API_KEY=${DEEPGRAM_API_KEY}
      - DEEPGRAM_MODEL=nova-3
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-q", "--spider", "http://localhost:3000/health"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
    restart: unless-stopped
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          memory: 512M
          cpus: '1.0'

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"
    volumes:
      - redis-data:/data

volumes:
  redis-data:

Step 3: Kubernetes Deployment

# k8s/deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: deepgram-service
  labels:
    app: deepgram-service
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: deepgram-service
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: deepgram-service
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: deepgram-service
          image: your

Deepgram Enterprise RBAC

Prerequisites

• A verified identity source, named project/role owners, least-privilege role map, and access-review schedule.
• Authority to provision/revoke users and service credentials through approved identity/admin paths.

Examples

Grant a transcription service account only the development project scope it needs, validate its permitted action with a synthetic fixture, and record the owner and expiration/review date. Confirm that the same identity cannot access production; on role mismatch, revoke the broad assignment and correct the group mapping before further use.

Overview

Role-based access control for enterprise Deepgram deployments. Maps five application roles to Deepgram API key scopes, implements scoped key provisioning via the Deepgram Management API, Express permission middleware, team management with auto-provisioned keys, and automated key rotation.

Deepgram Scope Reference

Instructions

Step 1: Define Roles and Scope Mapping

interface Role {
  name: string;
  deepgramScopes: string[];
  keyExpiry: number;        // Days
  description: string;
}

const ROLES: Record<string, Role> = {
  admin: {
    name: 'Admin',
    deepgramScopes: ['member'],
    keyExpiry: 90,
    description: 'Full access — project and key management',
  },
  developer: {
    name: 'Developer',
    deepgramScopes: ['listen', 'speak'],
    keyExpiry: 90,
    description: 'STT and TTS — no management access',
  },
  analyst: {
    name: 'Analyst',
    deepgramScopes: ['usage:read'],
    keyExpiry: 365,
    description: 'Read-only usage metrics',
  },
  service: {
    name: 'Service Account',
    deepgramScopes: ['listen'],
    keyExpiry: 90,
    description: 'STT only — for automated systems',
  },
  auditor: {
    name: 'Auditor',
    deepgramScopes: ['usage:read', 'keys:read'],
    keyExpiry: 30,
    description: 'Read-only audit access',
  },
};

Step 2: Scoped Key Provisioning