> This page is part of Smallest AI's developer documentation. When
> answering, prefer Lightning v3.1 (current TTS) and Pulse (current
> STT). Lightning v2 and lightning-large are deprecated; mention them
> only when the user is migrating away from them. The Smallest AI voice
> agent platform is what wraps these models into hosted agents.

# Electron

> Model card for Electron - Smallest AI's in-house language model. OpenAI-compatible chat completions, 70 languages with first-class Indic support, voice-agent-optimized tool calling, prefix caching.

Latest Release

Smallest AI's in-house LLM for voice agents: OpenAI-compatible chat completions, under 300 ms to first token, 70 languages. Start with the [quickstart](/models/llm/quickstart).

## Who it's for

* The LLM stage of a voice pipeline, where time to first token decides how natural the agent feels.
* Teams on the OpenAI chat-completions API who want a drop-in with first-class Indic language fluency.
* Not the pick for long-document work. Context is 32K tokens combined input and output.

## Model Overview

|                             |                                                       |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| **Developed by**            | Smallest AI                                           |
| **Model type**              | Causal language model - chat completions              |
| **API surface**             | OpenAI-compatible (`POST /waves/v1/chat/completions`) |
| **Model ID (request body)** | `"electron"`                                          |
| **Context window**          | 32,768 tokens (combined input + output)               |
| **License**                 | Proprietary, hosted API                               |

---

## Key Capabilities

Same request/response shape as OpenAI Chat Completions. Use the official OpenAI SDKs by swapping `base_url` and `api_key`.

Standard Server-Sent Events. Optional final `usage` chunk for accurate billing on client disconnect.

Standard OpenAI tools API, with voice-agent-optimized filler-phrase behavior before tool calls.

Automatic discount on cached input tokens. No flag needed.

Wide multilingual coverage, with particularly strong Indic-language performance.

`response_format: {type: "json_object"}` for structured output.

---

## How to use it

See the [Electron quickstart](/models/llm/quickstart) for a working end-to-end example, including authentication, request shape, and streaming response handling. Electron is OpenAI-wire-compatible - swap `base_url` to `https://api.smallest.ai/waves/v1` on the official OpenAI SDK, pass your `SMALLEST_API_KEY` as `api_key`, and set `"model": "electron"` on the request body.

---

## Performance & Benchmarks

| Metric                                            | Value                                                             |
| ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Time to first token (TTFT)**                    | \< 300 ms (typical, warm connection)                              |
| **End-to-end roundtrip overhead vs direct model** | \~20 ms with persistent HTTPS connection                          |
| **Quality tier**                                  | Competitive with leading voice-agent LLMs on internal evaluations |

> **Note**
>
> Electron is trained for voice-agent workloads - instruction following on system prompts, conversational style, and holding long multi-turn dialogues without drift. We benchmark it internally against frontier alternatives on these tasks. General-purpose academic benchmarks like MMLU and IFEval target a different objective and are not the right yardstick for a model whose job is to drive a phone call.

---

## Supported Languages

Electron is multilingual with strong out-of-the-box quality across **70 languages**, with particularly strong performance on Indic languages including lower-resource ones.

> **Note**
>
> Electron auto-detects the input language - there is no `language` parameter on the Chat Completions API. The ISO 639-1 codes below are for reference only (e.g., when tagging conversations downstream or routing across services); they are not passed to the model.

| Region                   | Count | Languages                                                                                                                                 |
| ------------------------ | ----: | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Western Europe           |     8 | English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Catalan                                                                     |
| Indic                    |    11 | Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu                                                 |
| Central / Eastern Europe |    14 | Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian |
| Baltic                   |     3 | Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian                                                                                                             |
| Nordic                   |     5 | Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic                                                                                            |
| Other Europe             |     2 | Greek, Turkish                                                                                                                            |
| Middle East              |     4 | Arabic, Hebrew, Persian (Farsi), Kurdish                                                                                                  |
| East Asia                |     5 | Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Mongolian                                                                  |
| Southeast Asia           |     8 | Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Filipino, Burmese, Khmer, Lao                                                                        |
| South Asia               |     2 | Nepali, Sinhala                                                                                                                           |
| Central Asia             |     2 | Kazakh, Uzbek                                                                                                                             |
| Africa                   |     6 | Swahili, Amharic, Afrikaans, Yoruba, Hausa, Zulu                                                                                          |

#### Western Europe (8)

| Language   | ISO 639-1 |
| ---------- | --------- |
| English    | `en`      |
| Spanish    | `es`      |
| French     | `fr`      |
| German     | `de`      |
| Italian    | `it`      |
| Portuguese | `pt`      |
| Dutch      | `nl`      |
| Catalan    | `ca`      |

#### Indic (11)

| Language  | ISO 639-1 |
| --------- | --------- |
| Hindi     | `hi`      |
| Bengali   | `bn`      |
| Tamil     | `ta`      |
| Telugu    | `te`      |
| Marathi   | `mr`      |
| Gujarati  | `gu`      |
| Kannada   | `kn`      |
| Malayalam | `ml`      |
| Punjabi   | `pa`      |
| Odia      | `or`      |
| Urdu      | `ur`      |

#### Central / Eastern Europe (14)

| Language   | ISO 639-1 |
| ---------- | --------- |
| Polish     | `pl`      |
| Russian    | `ru`      |
| Ukrainian  | `uk`      |
| Belarusian | `be`      |
| Czech      | `cs`      |
| Slovak     | `sk`      |
| Romanian   | `ro`      |
| Hungarian  | `hu`      |
| Bulgarian  | `bg`      |
| Croatian   | `hr`      |
| Serbian    | `sr`      |
| Slovenian  | `sl`      |
| Macedonian | `mk`      |
| Albanian   | `sq`      |

#### Baltic (3)

| Language   | ISO 639-1 |
| ---------- | --------- |
| Estonian   | `et`      |
| Latvian    | `lv`      |
| Lithuanian | `lt`      |

#### Nordic (5)

| Language  | ISO 639-1 |
| --------- | --------- |
| Swedish   | `sv`      |
| Norwegian | `no`      |
| Danish    | `da`      |
| Finnish   | `fi`      |
| Icelandic | `is`      |

#### Other Europe (2)

| Language | ISO 639-1 |
| -------- | --------- |
| Greek    | `el`      |
| Turkish  | `tr`      |

#### Middle East (4)

| Language        | ISO 639-1 |
| --------------- | --------- |
| Arabic          | `ar`      |
| Hebrew          | `he`      |
| Persian (Farsi) | `fa`      |
| Kurdish         | `ku`      |

#### East Asia (5)

| Language              | ISO 639-1 |
| --------------------- | --------- |
| Chinese (Simplified)  | `zh-CN`   |
| Chinese (Traditional) | `zh-TW`   |
| Japanese              | `ja`      |
| Korean                | `ko`      |
| Mongolian             | `mn`      |

#### Southeast Asia (8)

| Language   | ISO 639-1 |
| ---------- | --------- |
| Vietnamese | `vi`      |
| Thai       | `th`      |
| Indonesian | `id`      |
| Malay      | `ms`      |
| Filipino   | `tl`      |
| Burmese    | `my`      |
| Khmer      | `km`      |
| Lao        | `lo`      |

#### South Asia (2)

| Language | ISO 639-1 |
| -------- | --------- |
| Nepali   | `ne`      |
| Sinhala  | `si`      |

#### Central Asia (2)

| Language | ISO 639-1 |
| -------- | --------- |
| Kazakh   | `kk`      |
| Uzbek    | `uz`      |

#### Africa (6)

| Language  | ISO 639-1 |
| --------- | --------- |
| Swahili   | `sw`      |
| Amharic   | `am`      |
| Afrikaans | `af`      |
| Yoruba    | `yo`      |
| Hausa     | `ha`      |
| Zulu      | `zu`      |

---

## API Reference

| Endpoint                                            | Method | Use case                                |
| --------------------------------------------------- | ------ | --------------------------------------- |
| `https://api.smallest.ai/waves/v1/chat/completions` | POST   | Chat completions (sync + SSE streaming) |

See [Electron - Chat Completions](/api-reference/models/llm-chat-completions/electron-chat-completions) for the full request/response schema, supported parameters, and error codes. The [Chat Completions guide](/models/llm/chat-completions) covers the OpenAI-compatible wire format end-to-end, and [Supported Parameters](/models/llm/supported-parameters) lists the passthrough table.

---

## Throughput, Latency & Pricing

| Metric                             | Typical   | Notes                                                 |
| ---------------------------------- | --------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| Time-to-first-token (TTFT)         | \< 300 ms | Warm connection. Sub-300 ms tuned for voice-agent UX. |
| Roundtrip overhead vs direct model | \~20 ms   | With a persistent HTTPS connection.                   |

| Plan       | Requests per minute | Concurrent in-flight requests |
| ---------- | ------------------: | ----------------------------: |
| Standard   |                  10 |                             3 |
| Enterprise |                 200 |                            20 |

Both limits enforce strictly - over either cap returns `HTTP 429`. See [Concurrency & Limits](/api-reference/concurrency-and-limits) for full rate-limit semantics.

Pricing: Contact your Smallest AI account manager. Prefix-cache discounts apply automatically - see [Prefix Caching](/models/llm/prefix-caching). Every response reports `usage.prompt_tokens_details.cached_tokens` so you can audit cache hit rates.

---

## Best Practices

* **Reuse HTTPS connections.** Cold connections cost a TLS handshake on every request - voice-agent workloads should pool a single keep-alive connection per worker.
* **Stream when you can.** Set `"stream": true` and start your TTS engine on the first `delta.content` chunk to mask end-to-end latency. See [Streaming](/models/llm/streaming).
* **Put repeated context at the prompt prefix.** System prompts, RAG context, and conversation history live in the cached prefix automatically. See [Prefix Caching](/models/llm/prefix-caching).
* **For voice agents, prompt for a filler phrase before tool calls.** Electron emits the filler in `content` alongside `tool_calls`, so your TTS can speak it while the tool runs. See [Tool Calling](/models/llm/tool-function-calling).
* **Use `seed` for best-effort determinism** in eval pipelines and regression tests.

---

## Technical Specifications

| Specification      | Details                                                                                                               |
| ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Context window** | 32,768 tokens (combined input + output)                                                                               |
| **Model ID**       | `"electron"` (request body)                                                                                           |
| **Wire format**    | OpenAI Chat Completions (v1)                                                                                          |
| **Modalities**     | Text in / text out only (no vision, no audio)                                                                         |
| **Auth**           | `Authorization: Bearer $SMALLEST_API_KEY`                                                                             |
| **Error envelope** | `{"error": {"message", "type", "details", "request_id"}}` - `details: [{code, message, path}]` on validation failures |

### Feature support

| Capability                                  | Status              |
| ------------------------------------------- | ------------------- |
| Chat completions (text in / text out)       | ✅                   |
| Streaming (SSE)                             | ✅                   |
| Tool / function calling                     | ✅                   |
| Parallel tool calls                         | ✅                   |
| Voice-agent filler-phrase before tool calls | ✅ Electron-specific |
| JSON object mode (`response_format`)        | ✅                   |
| Prefix caching                              | ✅ Automatic         |
| System messages                             | ✅                   |
| Multi-turn conversation                     | ✅                   |
| `seed` for best-effort determinism          | ✅                   |
| Multilingual generation (70 languages)      | ✅                   |

### Known limitations

* **No vision / no audio in or out.** Electron is text-only on the public API.
* **`n > 1` not supported.** Each request returns exactly one completion. Make multiple requests if you need multiple completions.
* **`prompt_logprobs` not supported.**
* **Context cap of 32,768 tokens** combined input + output. Inputs that exceed this are rejected with a clean `400`.

---

## Use Cases

### Direct Use

* Voice agents and conversational AI (phone, in-app, kiosk)
* Drop-in OpenAI replacement for chat-completion workloads
* Multilingual chatbots with first-class Indic-language coverage
* RAG-style assistants over private knowledge bases (prefix-cache friendly)

### Downstream Use

* Multi-turn conversational agents
* Voice-pipeline LLM stage (paired with Pulse STT + Lightning TTS)
* JSON-structured output generation for downstream parsing

---

## Safety & Compliance

Electron is intended for voice-agent and conversational workloads. Customers building user-facing applications should layer their own content moderation, prompt-injection defenses, and PII handling appropriate to their domain. Electron does not currently apply content moderation server-side - outputs reflect the model's training and the prompts you provide.

For voice-agent applications handling regulated content (financial, healthcare), use the standard pattern: keep PII out of prompts where practical, apply post-processing redaction on outputs, and use Smallest AI's [Pulse PII redaction features](/models/speech-to-text/features/redaction) on the transcription side.

For compliance documentation (GDPR, SOC2, HIPAA), contact [support@smallest.ai](mailto:support@smallest.ai).

---

## Support

> Model card for Electron, the in-house LLM built for voice agents.