Auto-pause Deepgram streaming on silent connections to reduce transcription waste

[beastoin]

Problem

Per-hour analysis of Deepgram transcription usage (Jan 2026) shows significant cost waste from silent or near-silent streams being billed:

Bucket	% of Total Hours
< 1 WPM (near silent)	9.7%
1-5 WPM (mostly silent)	9.5%
5-20 WPM (light use)	15.9%
20-50 WPM (normal)	16.6%
> 50 WPM (active)	48.3%

19.2% of all transcription hours are below 5 WPM — essentially silence being billed. 9.7% are below 1 WPM (near-total silence).

• 2,456 unique users had near-silent hours (<1 WPM)
• 2,992 users had mostly-silent hours (1-5 WPM)

Proposed Fix

Auto-pause Deepgram streaming when WPM drops below threshold:

• If WPM < 1 for 5+ consecutive minutes → pause the stream
• Resume when audio activity is detected (via local VAD or similar)

Expected Impact

• Recover ~9.7-19.2% of transcription cost depending on threshold chosen
• No impact on user experience — silent streams produce no useful transcription anyway

Data Source

Deepgram usage analytics, Jan 2026, per-hour granularity. Analysis by @mon.

[beastoin]

📝 The proposed solution here is based on data analysis and has not been verified by the CTO. If you have a better approach to address this, feel free to propose it.