Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

Instructor

▲ RisingInstructor

A Python library that wraps LLM APIs and guarantees structured outputs (JSON, dataclasses, Pydantic models) by validating and retrying.

Think of it like

A typesafe layer on top of LLM completion—ask for an object, get an object or an error.

Example

Define a Pydantic model for a customer record. Call instructor.create(model=Customer, prompt='Extract customer from this email'). Get a fully-validated Customer object or a retry loop.

How it actually works

Instructor patches OpenAI/Anthropic SDKs to add a `response_model` parameter. It uses the schema to prompt the model, validates the output, and retries if validation fails. You don't write parsing logic; you just define the schema. Massively reduces boilerplate for structured extraction.

For product teams

Turns schema validation into a no-brainer for structured tasks; cuts downstream data bugs.

For engineers

Pydantic-native; patches LLM SDKs; automatic retry with backoff.

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