Streaming Response Behavior

Learn how Optave's streaming responses work and how to handle real-time AI-generated content in your application.

Enabling Streaming

To receive streaming responses, you need to configure the disableStream setting in your request:

const interactionParams = {
  request: {
    settings: {
      disableStream: false,  // Enable streaming (default is true)
      // ... other settings
    },
    // ... other request configuration
  }
};

const response = await client.interaction(interactionParams);

Important: Streaming is disabled by default (disableStream: true). Set disableStream: false to receive real-time updates as the AI model generates the response.

Streaming Interval

• Interval: 500ms (0.5 seconds)
• First Message: Sent after the first 500ms once content is available
• Subsequent Messages: Sent every 500ms while the AI model is generating the response

Message Content Type

• Cumulative/Complete: Each streamed message contains the full accumulated response from the beginning, not just the new delta/chunk
• Progressive Updates: The client receives increasingly complete versions of the response with each message
• Final Message: After streaming completes, a final message is sent with any remaining buffered content

Technical Implementation

The streaming process works as follows:

1. AI model chunks are received and accumulated into a buffer
2. Every 500ms, if the buffer contains content, the entire accumulated response is sent to the client via WebSocket
3. The buffer continues to grow with each new chunk from the AI provider
4. When streaming completes, any final content is sent immediately

Example Flow

Time 0ms:    Streaming starts
Time 500ms:  Message 1 sent: "Hello, how can"
Time 1000ms: Message 2 sent: "Hello, how can I help you today"
Time 1500ms: Message 3 sent: "Hello, how can I help you today? I'm here to"
...
Stream ends: Final message sent with complete response

Note: Each message replaces the previous one completely - clients should not concatenate messages, but rather display the latest message received.