OpenAI Streams

GitHub | NPM | Docs

Now with ChatGPT API support! See Use with ChatGPT API. (Whisper coming soon!)

This library returns OpenAI API responses as streams only. Non-stream endpoints like edits etc. are simply a stream with only one chunk update.

• Prioritizes streams, so you can display a completion as it arrives.
• Auto-loads OPENAI_API_KEY from process.env.
• One single function with inferred parameter type based on the endpoint you provide.

Uses ReadableStream by default for browser, Edge Runtime, and Node 18+, with a NodeJS.Readable version available at openai-streams/node.

Installation

yarn add openai-streams
# -or-
npm i --save openai-streams

Usage

await OpenAI(
  /** 'completions', 'chat', etc. */
  ENDPOINT,
  /** max_tokens, temperature, messages, etc. */
  PARAMS,
  /** apiBase, apiKey, mode, controller, etc */
  OPTIONS
);

1. Set the OPENAI_API_KEY env variable (or pass the { apiKey } option).

   The library will throw if it cannot find an API key. Your program will load this at runtime from process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY by default, but you may override this with the { apiKey } option.

   IMPORTANT: For security, you should only load this from a process.env variable.

   await OpenAI(
     "completions",
     {
       /* endpoint params */
     },
     { apiKey: process.env.MY_SECRET_API_KEY }
   );

2. Call the API via await OpenAI(endpoint, params, options?).

   The params type will be inferred based on the endpoint you provide, i.e. for the "edits" endpoint, import('openai').CreateEditRequest will be enforced.

   Example with raw streaming mode:

   await OpenAI(
     "chat",
     {
       messages: [
         /* ... */
       ],
     },
     { mode: "raw" }
   );

Edge/Browser: Consuming streams in Next.js Edge functions

This will also work in the browser, but you'll need users to paste their OpenAI key and pass it in via the { apiKey } option.

import { OpenAI } from "openai-streams";

export default async function handler() {
  const stream = await OpenAI("completions", {
    model: "text-davinci-003",
    prompt: "Write a happy sentence.\n\n",
    max_tokens: 100,
  });

  return new Response(stream);
}

export const config = {
  runtime: "edge",
};

Node: Consuming streams in Next.js API Route (Node)

If you cannot use an Edge runtime or want to consume Node.js streams for another reason, use openai-streams/node:

import type { NextApiRequest, NextApiResponse } from "next";
import { OpenAI } from "openai-streams/node";

export default async function test(_: NextApiRequest, res: NextApiResponse) {
  const stream = await OpenAI("completions", {
    model: "text-davinci-003",
    prompt: "Write a happy sentence.\n\n",
    max_tokens: 25,
  });

  stream.pipe(res);
}

_{See the example in example/src/pages/api/hello.ts.}

Use with ChatGPT API

By default, with mode = "tokens", you will receive just the message deltas. For full events, use mode = "raw".

See: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/chat/introduction

const stream = await OpenAI("chat", {
  model: "gpt-3.5-turbo",
  messages: [
    {
      role: "system",
      content: "You are a helpful assistant that translates English to French.",
    },
    {
      role: "user",
      content: 'Translate the following English text to French: "Hello world!"',
    },
  ],
});

In tokens mode, you will just receive the response chunks, which look like this (separated with newlines for illustration):

Hello
!
 How
 can
 I
 assist
 you
 today
?

Use mode = "raw" for access to raw events.

Notes

1. Internally, streams are often manipulated using generators via for await (const chunk of yieldStream(stream)) { ... }. We recommend following this pattern if you find it intuitive.