Recordings and transcripts

Every conversation an agent holds is transcribed, because transcription is how the agent hears the caller at all. Audio is only kept if you ask for it — and asking has legal consequences worth being deliberate about.

Transcripts

Available on any call an agent held, with no configuration. Turn by turn, with who said what and when.

GET/v1/calls/{id}/transcript

Shell

curl -s https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls/$CALL_ID/transcript \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY"

Response200 OK

{
  "call_id": "call_8b21f4c9a07e3d15",
  "turns": [
    { "role": "agent", "text": "Thanks for calling Acme Clinic. How can I help?", "at": "2026-09-08T09:41:09Z" },
    { "role": "user",  "text": "I need to move my appointment.",                  "at": "2026-09-08T09:41:14Z", "latency_ms": 690 },
    { "role": "agent", "text": "Of course. Which appointment is that?",           "at": "2026-09-08T09:41:15Z" }
  ]
}

latency_ms on a user turn is the gap between them finishing and the agent starting — the number the latency budget is about, per turn rather than averaged.

Two kinds of call have no transcript, for the same reason. A webrtc call and a simple one both put two people on the line with nothing here listening. Both can be transcribed by setting transcribe_calls — which needs the clients to uplink their microphones, and is therefore a decision rather than a default.

Live, while the call is happening

call.transcript.updated fires per line, carrying role and text, on webhooks and on the per-call stream:

GET/v1/calls/{id}/events

Shell

curl -sN https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls/$CALL_ID/events \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY"

For a live feed across every call at once, see the realtime protocol.

Recording audio

PATCH/v1/agents/{id}

Shell

curl -s -X PATCH https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/agents/$AGENT_ID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"record_calls": true}'

Recording is a legal decision before it is a technical one. Most places require the caller to be told, and several require consent. Put the notice in the greeting — it is one sentence, and it is the sentence that makes the recording usable rather than a liability.

Because of that, recording behaves unlike every other setting in one specific way: an agent group can never switch it on for members it already has. It must be adopted per agent, deliberately, by somebody who knows the consent position for that line.

Fetching the audio

GET/v1/calls/{id}/recording

GET/v1/calls/{id}/recording_url

Shell

# Straight to a file.
curl -s https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls/$CALL_ID/recording \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" -o call.wav

# Or a short-lived URL, for handing to a browser without proxying the bytes.
curl -s https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls/$CALL_ID/recording_url \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY"

Wait for call.recording.ready rather than polling. It fires when the recording is actually fetchable and carries its duration — a request before that answers 404, which looks like a call that was never recorded.

The URL is short-lived on purpose. It is a bearer credential for a customer's voice: anybody holding it can play the call. Mint one when somebody asks to listen, rather than storing it alongside the call.

How long things are kept

What	Kept
The call record — times, numbers, end reason, cost	For as long as the account
The transcript	With the call record
The summary and extractions	With the call record
The audio recording	On a retention window agreed with your account

Retention is set per account rather than per agent, because it is a policy rather than a setting. See security and data, and talk to us if the default does not match your obligations.

Getting them out

There is no bulk export endpoint. What there is instead is a list endpoint that pages, and transcripts fetched per call — which is what an export script does anyway:

Shell

curl -s "https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls?from=2026-09-01&to=2026-09-30&limit=100" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" \
| jq -r '.data[].id' \
| while read -r id; do
    curl -s "https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls/$id/transcript" \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" > "transcripts/$id.json"
  done

Pagination is covered on using your API key.