Instructor | Respan Docs

Set up Respan

Sign up — Create an account at platform.respan.ai
Create an API key — Generate one on the API keys page
Add credits or a provider key — Add credits on the Credits page or connect your own provider key on the Integrations page

Use AI

Add the Docs MCP to your AI coding tool to get help building with Respan. No API key needed.

1 {
2   "mcpServers": {
3     "respan-docs": {
4       "url": "https://mcp.respan.ai/mcp/docs"
5     }
6   }
7 }

What is Instructor?

Instructor is a Python library for getting structured data (JSON) from LLMs using Pydantic models. It patches OpenAI and other LLM clients to return validated, typed responses. The Respan integration uses respan-tracing auto-instrumentation to capture all LLM calls.

Check

Example project: GitHub Link

Setup

Install packages

$ pip install instructor openai respan-tracing

Set environment variables

$ export RESPAN_API_KEY="YOUR_RESPAN_API_KEY"
$ export OPENAI_API_KEY="YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY"

Initialize and run

1 from respan_tracing import RespanTelemetry, workflow, task, Instruments
2 from openai import OpenAI
3 import instructor
4 from pydantic import BaseModel
5 
6 # Initialize Respan — auto-instruments OpenAI calls
7 telemetry = RespanTelemetry(instruments={Instruments.OPENAI})
8 
9 # Patch OpenAI with Instructor
10 client = instructor.from_openai(OpenAI())
11 
12 class User(BaseModel):
13     name: str
14     age: int
15 
16 @task(name="extract_user")
17 def extract_user(text: str) -> User:
18     return client.chat.completions.create(
19         model="gpt-4o-mini",
20         response_model=User,
21         messages=[{"role": "user", "content": f"Extract user info: {text}"}],
22     )
23 
24 @workflow(name="extraction_pipeline")
25 def extraction_pipeline():
26     user = extract_user("John is 30 years old")
27     print(f"Name: {user.name}, Age: {user.age}")
28     return user
29 
30 extraction_pipeline()

View your trace

Open the Traces page to see your extraction traces.

Configuration

Instructor uses the respan-tracing SDK. Instruments.OPENAI auto-captures all OpenAI calls made by Instructor.

See the Python Tracing SDK reference for configuration options.