Welcome to LangChain
==========================
| **LangChain** is a framework for developing applications powered by language models. We believe that the most powerful and differentiated applications will not only call out to a language model, but will also be:
1. *Data-aware*: connect a language model to other sources of data
2. *Agentic*: allow a language model to interact with its environment
| The LangChain framework is designed around these principles.
| This is the Python specific portion of the documentation. For a purely conceptual guide to LangChain, see `here `_. For the JavaScript documentation, see `here `_.
Getting Started
----------------
| How to get started using LangChain to create an Language Model application.
- `Quickstart Guide <./getting_started/getting_started.html>`_
| Concepts and terminology.
- `Concepts and terminology <./getting_started/concepts.html>`_
| Tutorials created by community experts and presented on YouTube.
- `Tutorials <./getting_started/tutorials.html>`_
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 2
:caption: Getting Started
:name: getting_started
:hidden:
getting_started/getting_started.md
getting_started/concepts.md
getting_started/tutorials.md
Modules
-----------
| These modules are the core abstractions which we view as the building blocks of any LLM-powered application.
For each module LangChain provides standard, extendable interfaces. LangChain also provides external integrations and even end-to-end implementations for off-the-shelf use.
| The docs for each module contain quickstart examples, how-to guides, reference docs, and conceptual guides.
| The modules are (from least to most complex):
- `Models <./modules/models.html>`_: Supported model types and integrations.
- `Prompts <./modules/prompts.html>`_: Prompt management, optimization, and serialization.
- `Memory <./modules/memory.html>`_: Memory refers to state that is persisted between calls of a chain/agent.
- `Indexes <./modules/indexes.html>`_: Language models become much more powerful when combined with application-specific data - this module contains interfaces and integrations for loading, querying and updating external data.
- `Chains <./modules/chains.html>`_: Chains are structured sequences of calls (to an LLM or to a different utility).
- `Agents <./modules/agents.html>`_: An agent is a Chain in which an LLM, given a high-level directive and a set of tools, repeatedly decides an action, executes the action and observes the outcome until the high-level directive is complete.
- `Callbacks <./modules/callbacks/getting_started.html>`_: Callbacks let you log and stream the intermediate steps of any chain, making it easy to observe, debug, and evaluate the internals of an application.
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:caption: Modules
:name: modules
:hidden:
./modules/models.rst
./modules/prompts.rst
./modules/indexes.md
./modules/memory.md
./modules/chains.md
./modules/agents.md
./modules/callbacks/getting_started.ipynb
Use Cases
----------
| Best practices and built-in implementations for common LangChain use cases:
- `Autonomous Agents <./use_cases/autonomous_agents.html>`_: Autonomous agents are long-running agents that take many steps in an attempt to accomplish an objective. Examples include AutoGPT and BabyAGI.
- `Agent Simulations <./use_cases/agent_simulations.html>`_: Putting agents in a sandbox and observing how they interact with each other and react to events can be an effective way to evaluate their long-range reasoning and planning abilities.
- `Personal Assistants <./use_cases/personal_assistants.html>`_: One of the primary LangChain use cases. Personal assistants need to take actions, remember interactions, and have knowledge about your data.
- `Question Answering <./use_cases/question_answering.html>`_: Another common LangChain use case. Answering questions over specific documents, only utilizing the information in those documents to construct an answer.
- `Chatbots <./use_cases/chatbots.html>`_: Language models love to chat, making this a very natural use of them.
- `Querying Tabular Data <./use_cases/tabular.html>`_: Recommended reading if you want to use language models to query structured data (CSVs, SQL, dataframes, etc).
- `Code Understanding <./use_cases/code.html>`_: Recommended reading if you want to use language models to analyze code.
- `Interacting with APIs <./use_cases/apis.html>`_: Enabling language models to interact with APIs is extremely powerful. It gives them access to up-to-date information and allows them to take actions.
- `Extraction <./use_cases/extraction.html>`_: Extract structured information from text.
- `Summarization <./use_cases/summarization.html>`_: Compressing longer documents. A type of Data-Augmented Generation.
- `Evaluation <./use_cases/evaluation.html>`_: Generative models are hard to evaluate with traditional metrics. One promising approach is to use language models themselves to do the evaluation.
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:caption: Use Cases
:name: use_cases
:hidden:
./use_cases/autonomous_agents.md
./use_cases/agent_simulations.md
./use_cases/personal_assistants.md
./use_cases/question_answering.md
./use_cases/chatbots.md
./use_cases/tabular.rst
./use_cases/code.md
./use_cases/apis.md
./use_cases/summarization.md
./use_cases/extraction.md
./use_cases/evaluation.rst
Reference Docs
---------------
| Full documentation on all methods, classes, installation methods, and integration setups for LangChain.
- `Reference Documentation <./reference.html>`_
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:caption: Reference
:name: reference
:hidden:
./reference/installation.md
./reference/integrations.md
./reference.rst
LangChain Ecosystem
-------------------
| Guides for how other companies/products can be used with LangChain.
- `LangChain Ecosystem <./ecosystem.html>`_
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:glob:
:caption: Ecosystem
:name: ecosystem
:hidden:
./ecosystem.rst
Additional Resources
---------------------
| Additional resources we think may be useful as you develop your application!
- `LangChainHub `_: The LangChainHub is a place to share and explore other prompts, chains, and agents.
- `Gallery `_: A collection of great projects that use Langchain, compiled by the folks at `Kyrolabs `_. Useful for finding inspiration and example implementations.
- `Deployments <./additional_resources/deployments.html>`_: A collection of instructions, code snippets, and template repositories for deploying LangChain apps.
- `Tracing <./additional_resources/tracing.html>`_: A guide on using tracing in LangChain to visualize the execution of chains and agents.
- `Model Laboratory <./additional_resources/model_laboratory.html>`_: Experimenting with different prompts, models, and chains is a big part of developing the best possible application. The ModelLaboratory makes it easy to do so.
- `Discord `_: Join us on our Discord to discuss all things LangChain!
- `YouTube <./additional_resources/youtube.html>`_: A collection of the LangChain tutorials and videos.
- `Production Support `_: As you move your LangChains into production, we'd love to offer more comprehensive support. Please fill out this form and we'll set up a dedicated support Slack channel.
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:caption: Additional Resources
:name: resources
:hidden:
LangChainHub
Gallery
./additional_resources/deployments.md
./additional_resources/tracing.md
./additional_resources/model_laboratory.ipynb
Discord
./additional_resources/youtube.md
Production Support