First Prompt Singapore · Jan 14, 2026

No More Prompts

How Voice Agents Pass the Vibe Check
VenueFirst Prompt Singapore
DateJan 14, 2026
SpeakerColin Yao
FormatInternational Conference Keynote
THE ARC02
WHAT THIS TALK IS ABOUT

Vibe is not a prompt problem. It is physics.

01 · SOTA Latency wins The Jan 2026 ceiling 02 · PHYSICS Vibe is physical Three things kill the vibe 03 · SURVIVAL Three laws Don't mishear · break · wait 04 · MEASURE VoiceAgentEval Feel it, measure it
Nobody passes the vibe check by writing a better prompt.One claim, start to finish: what makes an agent feel alive is physics — it can be taken apart, and it can be measured.
ACT 01
SOTA
Latency outweighs intelligence
Start from where Voice Agent SOTA stood in Jan 2026. Its north star is not "smarter" — it is "faster".
01 SOTA 02 PHYSICS 03 SURVIVAL 04 MEASURE
SOTA · JAN 202604
VOICE AGENTS SOTA · JAN 2026

Where latency outweighs intelligence.

TOLAN'S NORTH STAR
P90 < 1.5sThe whole product runs on one latency number: P90 response must land under 1.5 seconds.
LATENCY IS PARAMOUNT
The frontier moved
In the Jan 2026 SOTA, latency outweighs intelligence. A smarter but slower agent never gets to finish its sentence.
SOURCE · openai.com/index/tolan
When the best product in the field sets its north star on latency, the race has changed tracks.
MONEY QUOTE · 01
Latency is paramount. Where latency outweighs intelligence.
Voice Agents SOTA, Jan 2026 · Tolan's North Star: P90 < 1.5 s
ACT 02
PHYSICS
Vibe is physical
What kills the vibe is never "the model is not smart enough". It is three very physical things: waiting, distraction, crashing.
01 SOTA 02 PHYSICS 03 SURVIVAL 04 MEASURE
PHYSICS · LATENCY07
OUR BRAINS HAVE A STRICT SPEED LIMIT

Waiting kills the conversation.

~ 200 ms FACE-TO-FACE Instant feedback · It feels alive ~ 400 ms REMOTE CALLS We adapt We subconsciously wait ≥ 1 s HUMAN-AGENT We tolerate Not a conversation — but command & response FACE-TO-FACE / REMOTE CALL / HUMAN-AGENT
Our tolerance for delay is not fixed — it depends on who we think is on the other side.Most agents today live in the third box: usable, but that is no longer a conversation — it is command and response.
MONEY QUOTE · 02
If a human pauses, we assume they are thinking. If an agent pauses, we assume it is broken.
The same silence reads as thinking in a human — and as broken in an agent. That is the asymmetric penalty of latency.
PHYSICS · ATTENTION09
THE COCKTAIL PARTY PROBLEM

Noise doesn't kill the vibe. Distraction does.

Steady Noise AC · Fans · Machinery STATUS · SOLVED Sudden Noise Dog barking · Door slamming STATUS · MANAGEABLE Background Voices TV · Cafe chatter Others talking IMPACT · THE SILENT KILLER De-noising cannot fix this — it is human speech too A MATURE AGENT MUST KNOW WHO TO LISTEN TO
Engineering has solved the first two boxes. The one that wrecks conversations is the third.
PHYSICS · ATTENTION10
WE CALL THIS

Selective Attention Locking.

DE-NOISE Remove what you don't want Subtract what you do not want. This path solved steady noise — AC, fans, machinery — and absorbs most sudden bursts.
ATTENTION LOCKING Decide who you listen to Lock onto your speaker in a room full of voices. That takes selective attention + context + source separation, not stronger de-noising.
A mature agent doesn't just de-noise. It must know who to listen to.
ACT 03
SURVIVAL
Three laws of survival
It hears you, and it is fast enough. One thing left: it cannot crash in front of your customer. Stability is not an ops metric here — it is the experience itself.
01 SOTA 02 PHYSICS 03 SURVIVAL 04 MEASURE
SURVIVAL · ARCHITECTURE12
WHY WE CHOOSE CASCADED OVER END-TO-END

Real vibes don't crash.

CASCADED · OBSERVABLE ASR LISTEN LLM THINK TTS SPEAK OBSERVABLE MODULAR RESILIENT END-TO-END BLACK BOX One failure, total failure.
In human-agent conversation, stability IS the experience.
SURVIVAL · ARCHITECTURE13
WHAT CASCADED BUYS YOU

Three properties you cannot fake.

01 · RESILIENT
Fail Gracefully
When one part fails, the system adapts. It never crashes.
02 · MODULAR
Freedom to Swap
ASR / LLM / TTS. Upgrade or replace them independently.
03 · OBSERVABLE
No Black Boxes
Every ms of latency and every failure point must be traceable.
End-to-end is beautiful — until the first thing goes wrong.
MONEY QUOTE · 03
In human-agent conversation, stability IS the experience.
End-to-end is beautiful — until the first thing goes wrong.
SURVIVAL · THE 3 LAWS15
THE 3 LAWS OF VOICE AGENT SURVIVAL

Three laws. Miss one and there is no vibe.

LAW 01Don't Mishear.Selective Attention Locking — lock onto your speaker in a room full of voices, instead of treating everything you hear as input.
LAW 02Don't Break.Observable Cascaded Architecture — every millisecond of latency and every failure point can be traced, swapped, and recovered.
LAW 03Don't Make People Wait.Real-time Network — push the response back into the range where the brain still treats it as conversation.
These three are not bonus points. They are the entry bar.Survive first, then talk experience. Break any one of the three and you fail the vibe check.
MONEY QUOTE · 04
Don't mishear. Don't break. Don't make people wait.
The 3 Laws of Voice Agent Survival · Selective Attention Locking / Observable Cascaded Architecture / Real-time Network
ACT 04
MEASURE
Physics you can measure
This step only begins after you survive: if vibe is physical, it can be defined, scored, and compared.
01 SOTA 02 PHYSICS 03 SURVIVAL 04 MEASURE
MEASURE · VOICEAGENTEVAL18
BEYOND SURVIVAL

If vibe is physical, it can be measured.

SURVIVAL Don't Mishear Don't Break Don't Make People Wait VoiceAgentEval THE TURING TEST FOR VIBE & ACTION VIBE ACTION OUR CLAIM We are not just building Agents. We are defining the Physics of Human- Agent Interaction.
Once you accept that vibe is physical, you realize it can be measured.
MEASURE · WHERE WE SIT19
ENABLING REAL-TIME CONVERSATION TO TRULY HAPPEN

Apps above. Models between. We are beneath.

Apps ABOVE Models BETWEEN Real-Time Conversation AGORA · REAL-TIME NETWORK BENEATH
Enabling Real-Time Conversation to truly happen.The top two layers change every year. If the layer beneath them shakes, everything above is wasted.
TAKEAWAY20
WHAT TO TAKE HOME

Three things to take home.

01
Stop tuning prompts
The reason you fail the vibe check is almost never in the prompt. It is in latency, attention, and stability.
02
Survive first
Don't mishear, don't break, don't make people wait. Miss one of the three and no persona can save you.
03
Then measure it
Admit vibe is physical, and you can build a ruler for it. That is what VoiceAgentEval is doing.
No more prompts. Just physics you can measure.
Thank you

No More Prompts

How Voice Agents Pass the Vibe Check
VenueFirst Prompt Singapore
DateJan 14, 2026
ArchiveTalk Archive 09
NoteRebuilt from the original 8 slides · screen text verbatim