Generating and Streaming Text

Large language models (LLMs) can generate text in response to a prompt, which can contain instructions and information to process. For example, you can ask a model to come up with a recipe, draft an email, or summarize a document.

The Vercel AI SDK Core provides two functions to generate text and stream it from LLMs:

• generateText: Generates text for a given prompt and model.
• streamText: Streams text from a given prompt and model.

Advanced LLM features such as tool calling and structured data generation are built on top of text generation.

generateText

You can generate text using the generateText function. This function is ideal for non-interactive use cases where you need to write text (e.g. drafting email or summarizing web pages) and for agents that use tools.

import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: yourModel,
  prompt: 'Write a vegetarian lasagna recipe for 4 people.',
});

You can use more advanced prompts to generate text with more complex instructions and content:

import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: yourModel,
  system:
    'You are a professional writer. You write simple, clear, and concise content.',
  prompt: `summarize the following article in 3-5 sentences:\n${article}`,
});

streamText

Depending on your model and prompt, it can take a large language model (LLM) up to a minute to finish generating it's response. This delay can be unacceptable for interactive use cases such as chatbots or real-time applications, where users expect immediate responses.

Vercel AI SDK Core provides the streamText function which simplifies streaming text from LLMs.

import { streamText } from 'ai';

const result = await streamText({
  model: yourModel,
  prompt: 'Invent a new holiday and describe its traditions.',
});

// use textStream as an async iterable:
for await (const textPart of result.textStream) {
  console.log(textPart);
}

result.textStream is also a ReadableStream, so you can use it in a browser or Node.js environment.

import { streamText } from 'ai';

const result = await streamText({
  model: yourModel,
  prompt: 'Invent a new holiday and describe its traditions.',
});

// use textStream as a ReadableStream:
const reader = result.textStream.getReader();
while (true) {
  const { done, value } = await reader.read();
  if (done) {
    break;
  }
  process.stdout.write(value);
}

onFinish callback

When using streamText, you can provide an onFinish callback that is triggered when the model finishes generating the response and all tool executions.

import { streamText } from 'ai';

const result = await streamText({
  model: yourModel,
  prompt: 'Invent a new holiday and describe its traditions.',
  onFinish({ text, toolCalls, toolResults, finishReason, usage }) {
    // your own logic, e.g. for saving the chat history or recording usage
  },
});

Result helper functions

The result object of streamText contains several helper functions to make the integration into AI SDK UI easier:

• result.toAIStream(): Creates an AI stream object (with tool calls etc.) that can be used with StreamingTextResponse() and StreamData.
• result.toAIStreamResponse(): Creates an AI stream response (with tool calls etc.).
• result.toTextStreamResponse(): Creates a simple text stream response.
• result.pipeTextStreamToResponse(): Writes text delta output to a Node.js response-like object.
• result.pipeAIStreamToResponse(): Writes AI stream delta output to a Node.js response-like object.

Result promises

The result object of streamText contains several promises that resolve when all required data is available:

• result.text: The generated text.
• result.toolCalls: The tool calls made during text generation.
• result.toolResults: The tool results from the tool calls.
• result.finishReason: The reason the model finished generating text.
• result.usage: The usage of the model during text generation.

Examples

You can see generateText and streamText in action using various frameworks in the following examples:

generateText

streamText