Rooms Participants And Tracks

Two browser tabs of the same user join the same LiveKit room with identity='user-42'. The second join arrives while the first is still publishing audio.

Per LiveKit docs, participant identity is unique per room — the new join displaces the prior session. Integrator must detect the kicked-out event on the first client (disconnect with reason DUPLICATE_IDENTITY) and decide between (a) surface 'opened in another tab' UI, or (b) namespace identity per …

Operator stores JSON in Room.metadata: '{"tenant":"acme","plan":"pro"}'. A client SDK reads room.metadata and expects an object.

Per docs, Room.metadata is an opaque string up to the published size cap. Clients receive a string and must JSON.parse client-side. Integrator should version the schema (e.g., {"v":1,...}) and tolerate unknown fields. Do not rely on the SDK to deserialize for you.

CreateRoom sets empty_timeout=300 (5 min) and departure_timeout=20. After the last participant leaves, agent expects the room to live another 5 minutes for graceful reconnect.

empty_timeout governs lifetime when the room never had participants; departure_timeout governs lifetime after the last participant leaves. Choose both deliberately — short departure_timeout drops rooms during transient client reconnects (mobile network handover); long departure_timeout wastes resou…