Tip: WebRTC Cannot Retransmit Audio Packets in Browsers — Hard Constraint for Voice AI Agent Builders

Simon Willison·medium signal

Luke Curley (OpenAI) published a deep-dive explaining why WebRTC's design is fundamentally constrained for LLM-powered voice applications: the protocol hard-codes aggressive packet dropping with no retransmission option in browsers, prioritizing low latency over accuracy. For AI agents, audio must arrive as a continuous stream so the model can transcribe, reason, and generate speech while the user is still talking. Simon Willison flagged this May 9 as architecturally significant — builders using WebRTC for voice agents need to understand this is a protocol-level limitation, not a bug.