Instructor (gateway)

Route Instructor’s underlying OpenAI-compatible LLM calls through the Respan gateway to use 1000+ models from different providers. Only your Respan API key is needed - no separate provider key is required.

Paste this into your coding agent:


Help me set up the Respan gateway with the Instructor integration.
Follow https://www.respan.ai/docs/integrations/gateway/instructor.md

Setup

Install packages

Terminal


pip install instructor openai

Set environment variables

Terminal


export RESPAN_API_KEY="YOUR_RESPAN_API_KEY"
export RESPAN_BASE_URL="https://api.respan.ai/api"

No OPENAI_API_KEY is needed when the request is routed through the Respan gateway.

Point Instructor to the Respan gateway

Python


import os
from typing import TypedDict

import instructor

client = instructor.from_provider(
    "openai/gpt-5-mini",
    api_key=os.environ["RESPAN_API_KEY"],
    base_url=os.getenv("RESPAN_BASE_URL", "https://api.respan.ai/api"),
    mode=instructor.Mode.TOOLS,
)


class Person(TypedDict):
    name: str
    role: str


person = client.create(
    response_model=Person,
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": "Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist.",
        }
    ],
)
print(dict(person))

Switch models

Change the model string passed to instructor.from_provider to use another OpenAI model through the same gateway endpoint.

Python


client = instructor.from_provider(
    "openai/gpt-5.5",
    api_key=os.environ["RESPAN_API_KEY"],
    base_url=os.getenv("RESPAN_BASE_URL", "https://api.respan.ai/api"),
    mode=instructor.Mode.TOOLS,
)

Instructor’s from_provider string includes the SDK provider namespace. Keep this page to OpenAI models so Claude or Gemini are not shown as OpenAI-provider models. Use the Respan API or OpenAI SDK gateway pages for provider-neutral Claude and Gemini examples.

See the full model list .