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Overview

reason() — and reasonStream() — is one of the main building blocks of RΞASON. It allows you to call a LLM and gets its output:

import { reason } from 'tryreason'

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  return reason('tell me about San Francisco — be brief please.')
}

Calling the test entrypoint in the RΞASON Playground will result in:

reason() just calls the default LLM you defined in the .reason.config.js file and returns the completion for you.

There’s also the streaming variant called reasonStream():

import { reasonStream } from 'tryreason'

export async function* POST(req: Request) {
  return reasonStream('tell me about San Francisco — be brief please.')
}

Which will stream the response in real-time:

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reason vs reasonStream

It is important to note that reason() and reasonStream() are the same function with the distiction being that one streams data from the LLM in real-time and the other only returns when the LLM has fully finished.

For instance:

const completion = await reason('tell me a joke')
console.log(completion)

// vs

for await (const completion of reasonStream('tell me a joke')) {
  console.log(completion.value)
}

Will log:

reason():
Why don't scientists trust atoms? because they make up everything

reasonStream():
Why don't
Why don't scientists trust
Why don't scientists trust atoms? because
Why don't scientists trust atoms? because they make up
Why don't scientists trust atoms? because they make up everything

In this page, we’ll use reason() and reasonStream() interchangeably and everything talked here applies to both functions.

Although they only differ in one aspect, there are some important concepts to learn when working with reasonStream(), we’ll go over in the next page.

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The real magic

So far both reason() and reasonStream() functions seems nothing out of the ordinary. The real magic kicks in when we pass an interface to it:

import { reason } from "tryreason";

interface City {
  description: string;
  state: string;
  country: string;
}

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  return reason<City>('tell me about San Francisco')
}

This returns:

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Wait, what?!

Yep — RΞASON uses your TypeScript interface to actually ensure the LLM return in an object in that format.

import { __internal_DO_NOT_USE_reason as reason } from "tryreason";

export async function POST(req) {
  return reason('tell me about San Francisco', null, [{
    name: "description",
    type: "{\"type\":\"string\"}",
    prompt: "",
    required: true
  }, {
    name: "state",
    type: "{\"type\":\"string\"}",
    prompt: "",
    required: true
  }, {
    name: "country",
    type: "{\"type\":\"string\"}",
    prompt: "",
    required: true
  }]);
}

This means that changes to the interface passed to reason<interface>() or reasonStream<interface>() will change its output as well.

If we add a new property called population:

import { reason } from "tryreason";

interface City {
  description: string;
  state: string;
  country: string;
  population: number; // 👈 new property
}

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  return reason<City>('tell me about San Francisco')
}

Our entrypoint will now return population:

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Will the LLM always output a valid object?

This is a great question.

LLMs are non deterministic, making it impossible to assure they will always return the object that conforms to your interface.

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How does RΞASON handle when the LLM outputs an invalid object?

By default, RΞASON will throw an error in your code and point to what properties are missing/wrong.

This can be changed to an ignore behaviour, where RΞASON will not throw an error and continue as if everything was normal — read more here

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What can I do to make sure the LLM outputs a valid object?

There five things you can do:

1. Try a different prompt;
2. Try different names for the interface properties as they are passed to the LLM inside your prompt;
3. Use JSDoc to create good descriptions for your properties as they are also passed to the LLM;
4. Make your interface less complex;
5. Use a more capable model.

All LLMs available to use with RΞASON are pretty capable and will handle 99% of interfaces and cases with ease, and by doing the above you also greatly increase the chance of the LLM outputting the right object.

However, LLMs are non deterministic and to make a great a LLM app, you as the developer should be prepared to deal with cases where the LLM outputs an invalid object.

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Passing interfaces to reasonStream()

Naturally, you can also pass a interface to reasonStream() to have the object streamed:

import { reasonStream } from "tryreason";

interface City {
  description: string;
  state: string;
  country: string;
  population: number;
}

export async function* POST(req: Request) {
  return reasonStream<City>('tell me about San Francisco')
}

Calling this in the RΞASON Playground:

Be aware that there are certain rules when passing an interface to reason() and we’ll go over them in a bit. First, we want to highlight that RΞASON has an ESLint plugin that really helps developers.

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RΞASON ESLint plugin

Since RΞASON adds a little bit of new syntax, having an ESLint plugin becomes important because it wants developers while they’re in their IDE (vscode, nvim, etc) that something is wrong.

Let’s take a look at a code that will error in RΞASON:

With the ESLint plugin, your IDE warns to you whenever you create something that is not valid in RΞASON. This greatly increases your development speed.

We cannot stress how much having this helps developers use RΞASON. Make sure its working for you.

If you installed RΞASON using npx use-reason, the only thing you should do is install the ESLint plugin for your IDE. Most developers already have it installed, but we recommend checking to make sure.

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interface rules

The interface you pass to reason() (or reasonStream()) needs to follows some rules. Here they are:

• The interface needs to be fully defined within the same file that calls reason();
• The interface cannot extend another interface/type;
• You can only pass an interface to reason(), for instance reason<boolean>() is invalid;
• The interface you pass cannot be empty. It needs to have at least one property;
• The interface cannot use utility types (Omit<>, Partial<>, etc);

There’s also some rules about the type that each property in your interface can have:

• The following are invalid types: any, unknown, void, null, never, undefined and this;
• Literal types are not allowed. A literal type is foo: 'bar';
• property1: "foo" | "bar" | 10 is valid but property1: string | number is not;

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JSDoc comments

In our previous example the LLM was returning:

{
  "description": "San Francisco is a vibrant city known for its iconic landmarks, diverse culture, and thriving tech industry.",
  "state": "California",
  "country": "United States",
  "population": 883305
}

But suppose we want state to be CA instead of California — TX instead of Texas, etc. Well, that’s easy: Just ask to the LLM!

import { reason } from "tryreason";

interface City {
  description: string;

  /** Return the acronym only */
  state: string;

  country: string;
  population: number;
}

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  return reason<City>('tell me about San Francisco')
}

Will return:

The only thing we added to make this work was the /** Return the acronym only */ comment above the state property. It worked because:

• JSDoc comments above a property in the interface are passed into your prompt to the LLM:
  • Precisely, it is passed as the description for the parameter in the function calling body.
• Then the LLM just followed the instructions you passed;
• You should treat JSDoc comments the same you treat prompts — after all, they go in the prompt for the LLM.

But, what is “JSDoc”?

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JSDoc

Have you ever noticed that some functions have a description when you hover over them?

Well, the way those are defined is through JSDoc! Let’s take a peek at the fs.readFileSync() definition:

As you may have noticed, JSDoc comment are not like normal code comments:

1. They need to be defined as /** comment */;
2. Your IDE uses them to show code hints — showing them when you hover (and some other times);
3. And RΞASON uses them as part of your prompt to the LLM.

JSDoc is a standard to documment your code that most IDEs follow, that is why when you add JSDoc comments your IDE shows it when you hover over.

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How to add a JSDoc comment

Adding a basic JSDoc comment is easy:

/**
 * Hi! I'm JSDoc comment
 */
function foo() {

}

/** I'm another JSDoc comment */
function bar() {

}

The logic behind is simple:

• Every line of the comment needs to start with a *;
• The comment has to be created with /** {comment} */:
  • //* I'm an invalid JSDoc comment :( is an invalid JSDoc comment.

RΞASON uses JSDoc in a few of places, but in the context of reason() and reasonStream() their only use is above interface’s properties as property description for the LLM.

interface City {
  description: string;

  /** Return the acronym only */
  state: string;

  country: string;
  population: number;
}

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  return reason<City>('tell me about San Francisco')
}

To verify if you created a valid JSDoc comment, you can just hover over the property:

As you can see in the video, vscode (in this case) correctly shows the Return the acronym only when state is hovered.

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reason() options

There are some options you can pass to reason() and reasonStream() to change their behaviour:

import { reason } from 'tryreason'

const completion = await reason('Some prompt', {
  model: 'gpt-4',
  max_tokens: 2000,
  temperature: 0.2,
  validation_strategy: 'error'
})

Here’s what each does:

• model: which LLM model to use;
• max_tokens: the maximum number of tokens the LLM can return;
• temperature: set the temperature of the LLM;
• validation_strategy: what should RΞASON do if the LLM outputs an object that does not conforms to the interface you passed, possible values:
  • error: the default value and it means that RΞASON will throw an error if the object is invalid;
  • ignore: RΞASON will ignore the invalid object.

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Example using nested objects

To solidify your knowledge, let’s go through a more complex example.

Let’s say we are building a website that users can input a city they plan to visit and we show them some cool places to visit in that city:

import { reasonStream } from 'tryreason'

interface City {
  /** An one sentence description of the city */
  description: string;  
  points_of_interest: {
    name: string;
    description: string;
    address: {
      address_line: string;
      latitude: number;
      longitude: number;
    };
  }[];
}

export async function* POST(req: Request) {
  const { city } = await req.json()
  return reasonStream<City>(`Tell me about ${city}`)
}

Will return:

As you can see, we can create complex nested objects with ease.

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Conclusion

In this page we learned:

• How one of the building blocks of RΞASON — the reason() function — works.
• How to pass an interface to it.
• That it exists the variant reasonStream() that is able to stream from the LLM.

Earlier, we briefly mentioned that reasonStream() and reason() are almost identical, their difference being that reasonStream() streams data from the LLM. This makes reasonStream() a bit different in its usage — since it is not a normal async function that you can const result = await reasonStream().

Since a great LLM app almost always needs streaming, being able to use reasonStream() is key to building a great LLM app. And that’s what we will go over in the next page.