Viva Your Oral Exam With a Real Voice Agent

Viva voce and thesis defenses are mandatory across universities in South Asia and Europe — but there's no way to actually rehearse one. Flashcards test recall. Viva tests whether you can think under real, unpredictable questioning, out loud, the way a real exam committee does. Viva is a voice agent, not a transcription tool. You speak your answer; AssemblyAI's streaming STT transcribes it in real time; a custom turn-controller decides when you've actually finished (allowing natural pauses instead of cutting you off after your first "um"); an LLM examiner then decides whether to press deeper on a weak spot or move to a new concept — and asks that follow-up out loud. At the end of the session, Viva produces a written verdict: which concepts you clearly defended, and which you couldn't hold up under questioning. Built with: AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming (real-time STT), a browser-based turn-controller for end-of-answer detection, an LLM for adaptive questioning and the final verdict, and Web Speech Synthesis for spoken output — all running on Vercel serverless functions so the AssemblyAI API key never touches the browser. This isn't a chatbot with a microphone bolted on — the entire branching logic only exists because of real-time speech. There's no equivalent product for the millions of students who face a viva every semester with no way to practice one.