Jim often cuts in before I finish speaking

[April-ying]

Problem

During interviews, Jim often starts replying while I'm still in the middle of a sentence. It usually happens when I pause briefly to think or to find the next word.

For example: I was explaining "I think I would use a hash map to... (pause) ...store the index of each number", and Jim started replying during the pause.

Initial analysis

I checked how turn-taking works. The agent relies on Gemini Live's automatic activity detection. In src/gemini.rs:

"automaticActivityDetection": {
    "silenceDurationMs": boot.silence_ms,
    "startOfSpeechSensitivity": boot.start_sensitivity
}

silence_ms defaults to DEFAULT_GEMINI_SILENCE_MS = 1000 in src/config.rs. So if I stay silent for about 1 second, Gemini treats my turn as finished.

The comment in config.rs already describes this trade-off:

• A shorter window cuts off people who pause mid-sentence (700ms was measured against a fluent speaker)
• A longer window makes every reply feel slow.

So I don't think changing the number alone can fix it. In a face-to-face interview, people use more than silence to tell whether someone has finished (intonation, gaze, gestures). In CodeTrial, the candidate also can't see when Jim is about to take the turn.

Possible implementation

Show a countdown while the candidate is silent:

1. When I stop speaking, a small ring near Jim's avatar starts filling.
2. If I keep talking, the ring resets.
3. If I'm done, I press a key and Jim replies immediately.
4. If I forget to press, Jim replies when the ring is full, so the interview never gets stuck.

This allows a longer silence window (e.g. 3–5s) without making every reply slow, because the candidate can skip the wait.

[xubo9367]

I experienced a similar issue during my CodeTrial mock interviews. Sometimes Jim started responding before I had completely finished explaining my approach, especially when I paused briefly while thinking. This made it harder to explain my reasoning continuously during the REACTO process. A possible improvement might be to add a slightly longer silence threshold before treating the user's turn as finished.

[jserv]

See if PR #192 resolves this issue.