Roark Flow Builder vs Automated Voice Agent Test Generation
The short answer
A visual flow builder gives you control; automated test generation gives you coverage. Production voice agents need both. As of November 1, 2026:
- Roark’s visual flow builder (Scripted mode) is the right tool for flows where the exact sequence matters — authentication, payments, legally required disclosures, transfers. You draw the conversation; Roark turns every path into a test.
- Automated generation — Roark’s Ask Roark drafting, Cekura’s scenario generator, Coval’s starter packs — is the right tool for breadth: dozens or hundreds of personas, phrasings and edge cases you would never script by hand.
- The workflow that works: generate a broad suite first, review it, then hand-script the handful of flows that must never regress, and run everything in CI on each prompt or model change.
The comparison
| Roark Scripted (visual flow builder) | Roark Improv + Ask Roark | Cekura auto-generation | Coval scenario packs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How tests are made | Draw a DAG of steps on a canvas | Write a customer brief, or generate from a description, transcript or real calls | Model generates scenarios from agent description, prompt, JSON or knowledge base | Industry starter packs; custom packs on higher tiers |
| Variants | One per path, derived automatically | Hand-authored edge cases; generated drafts badged “Generated” | Hundreds generated, each with expected outcome | From library + your own |
| Determinism | Exact lines, every run | Same intent, new wording each run | Varied by design | Varied |
| Best for | Compliance-critical, regulated flows | Realistic behaviour, regression from real failures | Fast coverage for a new agent | Teams wanting a ready library |
| Price (list) | $0.15/min + provider costs; Team $500/mo at $0.10/min | same | $0.25/min; Startup $500/mo ≈ 2,000 min | Starter $100/mo (100 min); Growth $500/mo (1,000 min) |
How Roark’s visual flow builder works
Every Roark customer flow describes one type of customer conversation: who the caller is, what they want, the variants to cover, and agent expectations — short LLM-graded instructions checked against every transcript. Each flow is authored in one of two modes:
- Improv: a free-text brief (“you want to understand a charge on your latest invoice”). The simulator improvises a fresh conversation every run — different words, same intent. You write edge cases by hand.
- Scripted: a full-screen graph canvas. You add steps, connect them with edges and can splice in another scripted flow with a flow-link step. Cycles are blocked, so every conversation terminates. When you save, Roark derives one variant per unique path through the graph, and the agent turns you wrote on each path become part of what it is graded on.
Flows can also be defined in code (roark.config.ts or YAML) and applied with the Roark CLI, so the suite is versioned in git and runs from CI.
Where automated generation wins
Writing a graph for every conversation does not scale. Generation does:
- Roark opens its Ask Roark assistant from the New flow chooser to draft a flow from a plain-language description, from an uploaded transcript, or from real production calls you select. Drafted variants carry a Generated badge until you review them — the point where a human keeps control.
- Cekura states that its fine-tuned model converts an agent description and knowledge base into hundreds of test cases, each with expected outcomes and success criteria, and varies personalities — accent, tone, background noise, speaking style.
- Coval ships industry starter packs of scenarios on Starter and custom packs on Growth.
The risk of generation is plausible-but-irrelevant tests and silent gaps on the paths that matter most. That is exactly what the scripted graph covers.
A practical setup
- Week one: generate 50–200 scenarios from your agent prompt or from a week of production calls. Run them, read the failures, delete the noise.
- Script the critical five to ten: identity verification, payment capture, cancellation, escalation to a human, any regulated disclosure. Draw them in Scripted mode so wording and order are fixed.
- Convert every production failure into a flow. Roark’s “from your calls” option makes this one step.
- Gate deploys: run the suite in CI on each prompt, model, STT or TTS change and compare with the last green baseline.
At 2,000 simulated minutes a month, list cost is roughly $300 on Roark pay-as-you-go (plus telephony and speech at cost, and metrics), $500 on Cekura Startup, and $500 on Coval Growth plus $250 of overage. For the full vendor comparison including Bluejay and Hamming, see voice agent regression testing vendors.
Last verified: November 1, 2026.