Patching¶

Instructor enhances client functionality with three new keywords for backwards compatibility. This allows use of the enhanced client as usual, with structured output benefits.

• response_model: Defines the response type for chat.completions.create.
• max_retries: Determines retry attempts for failed chat.completions.create validations.
• validation_context: Provides extra context to the validation process.

The default mode is instructor.Mode.TOOLS which is the recommended mode for OpenAI clients. This mode is the most stable and is the most recommended for OpenAI clients. The other modes are for other clients and are not recommended for OpenAI clients.

Tool Calling¶

This is the recommended method for OpenAI clients. It is the most stable as functions is being deprecated soon.

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.TOOLS)

Parallel Tool Calling¶

Parallel tool calling is also an option but you must set response_model to be Iterable[Union[...]] types since we expect an array of results. Check out Parallel Tool Calling for more information.

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.PARALLEL_TOOLS)

Function Calling¶

Note that function calling is soon to be deprecated in favor of TOOL mode for OpenAI. But will still be supported for other clients.

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.FUNCTIONS)

JSON Mode¶

JSON mode uses OpenAI's JSON fromat for responses. by setting response_format={"type": "json_object"} in the chat.completions.create method.

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.JSON)

JSON Schema Mode¶

JSON Schema mode uses OpenAI's JSON fromat for responses. by setting response_format={"type": "json_object", schema:response_model.model_json_schema()} in the chat.completions.create method. This is only available for select clients (e.g. llama-cpp-python, Anyscale, Together)

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.JSON_SCHEMA)

Markdown JSON Mode¶

This just asks for the response in JSON format, but it is not recommended, and may not be supported in the future, this is just left to support vision models and will not give you the full benefits of instructor.

import instructor
from openai import OpenAI

client = instructor.patch(OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.MD_JSON)