Amazon Nova S2S on Bedrock

For teams already running infrastructure on AWS, Amazon Nova provides end-to-end voice conversations through AWS Bedrock without introducing a separate vendor. This avoids additional billing relationships, keeps audio data within your AWS account boundary, and leverages existing IAM policies for access control. This guide covers integrating the Amazon Nova S2S provider with Beluga AI for real-time streaming voice interactions.

Overview

The Amazon Nova integration is the voice/s2s/providers/nova package. It registers itself as "nova" with the s2s registry and implements the standard s2s.S2S / s2s.Session interfaces, so the code you write against it is the same as for the OpenAI Realtime and Gemini Live providers.

The provider talks to Bedrock through the InvokeModelWithBidirectionalStream API using aws-sdk-go-v2, so requests are SigV4-signed with your AWS credentials: static keys from Extra["access_key_id"] / Extra["secret_access_key"] (and optional Extra["session_token"]), or the default AWS credential chain when those are absent.

Prerequisites

Go 1.26 or later
AWS account with Bedrock access
Nova 2 Sonic model enabled in Bedrock console
AWS credentials configured (IAM role or access keys)

Installation

go get github.com/lookatitude/beluga-ai/v2

Configure AWS credentials:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-access-key"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret-key"
export AWS_REGION="us-east-1"

Enable the Nova 2 Sonic model in the AWS Bedrock console before proceeding.

Configuration

Create a Nova engine through the registry and start a session. Instructions and tools go on s2s.Config (or as s2s.Options to Start); the region goes in Extra:

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "os"

    "github.com/lookatitude/beluga-ai/v2/voice/s2s"
    _ "github.com/lookatitude/beluga-ai/v2/voice/s2s/providers/nova"
)

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()

    engine, err := s2s.New("nova", s2s.Config{
        Model:        "amazon.nova-sonic-v1:0",
        Instructions: "You are a helpful assistant.",
        Extra:        map[string]any{"region": os.Getenv("AWS_REGION")},
    })
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Failed to create Nova provider: %v", err)
    }

    session, err := engine.Start(ctx)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Failed to start session: %v", err)
    }
    defer session.Close()

    fmt.Println("Nova session started")
}

Usage

Bidirectional Audio Streaming

Send audio with SendAudio and consume s2s.SessionEvent values from Recv:

func handleNovaSession(ctx context.Context, session s2s.Session, audioIn <-chan []byte, play func([]byte)) error {
    go func() {
        for audio := range audioIn {
            if err := session.SendAudio(ctx, audio); err != nil {
                log.Printf("Send error: %v", err)
                return
            }
        }
    }()

    for event, err := range session.Recv(ctx) {
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
        switch event.Type {
        case s2s.EventAudioOutput:
            play(event.Audio)
        case s2s.EventTranscript, s2s.EventTextOutput:
            log.Printf("text: %s", event.Text)
        case s2s.EventError:
            return event.Error
        }
    }
    return nil
}

To use the engine inside a voice pipeline, wrap it with s2s.AsFrameProcessor(engine).

Observability

Add OpenTelemetry tracing to monitor Nova sessions:

import (
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/attribute"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/trace"
)

tracer := otel.Tracer("beluga.voice.s2s.nova")
ctx, span := tracer.Start(ctx, "nova.start",
    trace.WithAttributes(
        attribute.String("model", "amazon.nova-sonic-v1:0"),
        attribute.String("region", os.Getenv("AWS_REGION")),
    ),
)
defer span.End()

Configuration Reference

Field	Description	Default	Required
`Extra["region"]`	AWS region	`us-east-1`	No
`Extra["base_url"]`	Bedrock Runtime endpoint override (`http(s)` only)	SDK-resolved regional endpoint	No
`Extra["access_key_id"]`, `Extra["secret_access_key"]`, `Extra["session_token"]`	Static AWS credentials	Default AWS credential chain	No
`Model`	Nova model ID	`amazon.nova-sonic-v1:0`	No
`Voice`	Voice selection	`matthew`	No
`Instructions`	System instructions	-	No

Troubleshooting

Model not enabled

Verify the Nova model is enabled in the AWS Bedrock console for your region. Navigate to Bedrock > Model access and confirm Nova 2 Sonic is available.

Access denied

Ensure your IAM role or user has the required Bedrock permissions. Add bedrock:InvokeModelWithResponseStream to your IAM policy.

Advanced Topics

Production Deployment

Use IAM roles instead of access keys for authentication in production
Monitor Bedrock usage through AWS Cost Explorer and CloudWatch
Choose an AWS region close to your users for lower latency
Implement connection retry logic for transient Bedrock errors
Set context timeouts to prevent indefinite streaming sessions