# What is Atmee

URL: https://www.atmee.ai/docs/v2/getting-started/introduction

> Atmee puts a talking video avatar in your product. It holds live, spoken conversations with your users, and you start each one from your own server.

Atmee puts a talking video person, an [avatar](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#avatar), into your website or
app. Your users talk to it out loud, the way they would on a video call, and it answers in its own
voice, with a face that moves as it speaks. You decide who it is, what it knows and where it
appears. Atmee runs the speech, the conversation and the video.

## What people build with it

* **A front desk.** A receptionist for a clinic, a hotel or a showroom that greets visitors and
  answers questions about opening hours, prices and bookings.
* **A guide.** A product expert on your site that walks a customer through a plan, a feature or a
  checkout.
* **A tutor or coach.** A teacher who explains a topic and answers follow-up questions, or a
  partner for practising a language or an interview.
* **An interviewer.** A first-round screener that asks every candidate the same questions, at any
  hour.

## How it works

1. **Make an avatar.** Give it a portrait, a short voice sample and a
   [persona](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#persona): its name, personality and what it should talk about. Add
   [knowledge](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#knowledge) files if it should answer from your documents. Do this
   in [Studio](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#studio) or [through the API](/docs/v2/api/create-avatar),
   on one of our two [models](/docs/v2/getting-started/models): Atmee V2, the most human-like, or
   Atmee V1, at half the credits.

   Or let an AI agent do it. With the atmee agent skills and MCP server, Claude Code, Codex,
   Cursor or Claude makes the avatar with you in a chat. It can also write the server endpoint and
   the page that shows the avatar. See **Build it with an AI agent** below.

2. **Start a conversation from your server.** When a user wants to talk, your server asks Atmee
   for a [session](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#session) with your [API key](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#api-key).
   Atmee puts the avatar in a video room and sends back what the page needs to join it.

3. **Show it on your page.** Your page joins the room and shows the avatar's video. The user talks;
   the avatar answers.

Each session is paid in [credits](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary#credit) from your account, by the minute. Your
users need no Atmee account and are never charged.

## Ways to build

- [Let Atmee run the conversation](/docs/v2/api/quickstart): The Session API: Atmee listens, thinks and answers. You write one server endpoint and a page that shows the video.
- [Keep your own voice agent, add a face](/docs/v2/livekit-plugin/livekit-agents-plugin): The LiveKit Agents plugin: your agent decides what to say, Atmee renders the avatar saying it.

- [Build it with an AI agent](/docs/v2/agents): Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or Claude makes the avatar and writes the app around it while you chat.

Not sure which? [Choose your integration](/docs/v2/api/choose-integration) compares the first two.
New words on these pages are explained in the [Glossary](/docs/v2/getting-started/glossary).