Api help having trouble publishing agents

Support Help
1

API publish-agent does not snapshot updated conversation flow content — only dashboard Deploy works

We’re building a multi-tenant platform where all agents share one conversation flow. We update flow nodes and global_prompt via PATCH /update-conversation-flow (returns 200, GET confirms changes saved). Then we publish agents via POST /publish-agent (returns 200, version increments).

Problem: live calls still use the OLD node content from the original flow version. The published agent snapshot does not pick up the updated draft.

What we’ve tried:

  • PATCH /update-conversation-flow to update greeting node text — 200 OK, GET confirms change

  • POST /publish-agent — 200 OK, version increments

  • PATCH /update-phone-number with different agent_version values (0, latest, specific version) — all accepted, none fix the content

  • Deleting and recreating agents — new agents still get old flow content

  • Publishing via the Python SDK (client.agent.publish) — same result

  • Passing extra params to publish (force, snapshot_flow, etc.) — silently ignored

What DOES work: manually editing the node in the Retell dashboard and clicking Deploy. After that, the agent serves the correct content immediately.

This means the dashboard Deploy does something that the API publish-agent endpoint does not. For us this is a blocker — we provision agents programmatically and can’t manually deploy each one.

Questions:

  1. Is there an API equivalent to the dashboard Deploy button that re-snapshots the current flow draft into the published version?

  2. When creating new agents on a shared flow, how do we ensure they get the latest flow content instead of the original version 0 content?

  3. Does the inbound webhook agent_override support conversation flow version or node overrides?

2

Hi @hello5

Thank you for providing these details. I’ve shared them with our team for review and will get back to you with a reply as soon as possible.

Best regards

3

Hello @hello5

Did you update the phone number to the correct new agent version after updating?

  1. The publish API is the equivalent of the dashboard Deploy button, but the button also gives you an option to update the phone number to lestest version. You can still do that using the Phone number API
  2. You can keep the agent version on the phone number at draft
  3. Yes, it does support conversation flow version: check this link Inbound webhook - Retell AI
4

Thanks Omar. We tried setting agent_version to 0 on the phone number via the API but the agent still served old content. What’s the correct API value for “draft”? Is it null, 0, "draft", or omitting the field entirely?

For context: we PATCH the flow, then POST publish-agent, then PATCH update-phone-number with inbound_agents. The phone number accepts the version value but live calls still use the old greeting from the original published snapshot.