Asterisk AMI Commands Guide

Originally published at vicistack.com . Follow us for more call center engineering content. Last updated: March 2026 | Reading time: ~26 minutes The Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI) is the programmatic backdoor to your PBX. It's a TCP socket protocol that lets external programs control Asterisk — originate calls, redirect channels, read variables, monitor events, and do anything the Asterisk CLI can do, but from code. VICIdial uses AMI extensively under the hood. The dialer cron scripts originate calls through AMI. The agent screen sends DTMF through AMI. Call monitoring, conference management, and agent session control all go through AMI. If you understand AMI, you understand the engine that drives VICIdial's real-time operations. The official documentation lists 150+ commands. You'll use maybe 15 of them regularly. Here are those 15, with the exact syntax and practical examples. Setting Up AMI manager.conf AMI is configured in /etc/asterisk/manager.conf . VICIbox ships with this pre-