How to create a dynamic (self-constructing) chain

Prerequisites

This guide assumes familiarity with the following:

• LangChain Expression Language (LCEL)
• How to turn any function into a runnable

Sometimes we want to construct parts of a chain at runtime, depending on the chain inputs (routing is the most common example of this). We can create dynamic chains like this using a very useful property of RunnableLambda's, which is that if a RunnableLambda returns a Runnable, that Runnable is itself invoked. Let's see an example.

OpenAI

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-3.5-turbo-0125")

Anthropic

pip install -qU langchain-anthropic

import getpass
import os

os.environ["ANTHROPIC_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_anthropic import ChatAnthropic

llm = ChatAnthropic(model="claude-3-sonnet-20240229")

Google

pip install -qU langchain-google-vertexai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["GOOGLE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_google_vertexai import ChatVertexAI

llm = ChatVertexAI(model="gemini-pro")

Cohere

pip install -qU langchain-cohere

import getpass
import os

os.environ["COHERE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_cohere import ChatCohere

llm = ChatCohere(model="command-r")

FireworksAI

pip install -qU langchain-fireworks

import getpass
import os

os.environ["FIREWORKS_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_fireworks import ChatFireworks

llm = ChatFireworks(model="accounts/fireworks/models/mixtral-8x7b-instruct")

MistralAI

pip install -qU langchain-mistralai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["MISTRAL_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_mistralai import ChatMistralAI

llm = ChatMistralAI(model="mistral-large-latest")

TogetherAI

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["TOGETHER_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

llm = ChatOpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.together.xyz/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["TOGETHER_API_KEY"],
    model="mistralai/Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1",)

# | echo: false

from langchain_anthropic import ChatAnthropic

llm = ChatAnthropic(model="claude-3-sonnet-20240229")

API Reference:ChatAnthropic

from langchain_core.output_parsers import StrOutputParser
from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate
from langchain_core.runnables import Runnable, RunnablePassthrough, chain

contextualize_instructions = """Convert the latest user question into a standalone question given the chat history. Don't answer the question, return the question and nothing else (no descriptive text)."""
contextualize_prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_messages(
    [
        ("system", contextualize_instructions),
        ("placeholder", "{chat_history}"),
        ("human", "{question}"),
    ]
)
contextualize_question = contextualize_prompt | llm | StrOutputParser()

qa_instructions = (
    """Answer the user question given the following context:\n\n{context}."""
)
qa_prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_messages(
    [("system", qa_instructions), ("human", "{question}")]
)


@chain
def contextualize_if_needed(input_: dict) -> Runnable:
    if input_.get("chat_history"):
        # NOTE: This is returning another Runnable, not an actual output.
        return contextualize_question
    else:
        return RunnablePassthrough()


@chain
def fake_retriever(input_: dict) -> str:
    return "egypt's population in 2024 is about 111 million"


full_chain = (
    RunnablePassthrough.assign(question=contextualize_if_needed).assign(
        context=fake_retriever
    )
    | qa_prompt
    | llm
    | StrOutputParser()
)

full_chain.invoke(
    {
        "question": "what about egypt",
        "chat_history": [
            ("human", "what's the population of indonesia"),
            ("ai", "about 276 million"),
        ],
    }
)

API Reference:StrOutputParser | ChatPromptTemplate | Runnable | RunnablePassthrough | chain

"According to the context provided, Egypt's population in 2024 is estimated to be about 111 million."

The key here is that contextualize_if_needed returns another Runnable and not an actual output. This returned Runnable is itself run when the full chain is executed.

Looking at the trace we can see that, since we passed in chat_history, we executed the contextualize_question chain as part of the full chain: https://smith.langchain.com/public/9e0ae34c-4082-4f3f-beed-34a2a2f4c991/r

Note that the streaming, batching, etc. capabilities of the returned Runnable are all preserved

for chunk in contextualize_if_needed.stream(
    {
        "question": "what about egypt",
        "chat_history": [
            ("human", "what's the population of indonesia"),
            ("ai", "about 276 million"),
        ],
    }
):
    print(chunk)

What
 is
 the
 population
 of
 Egypt
?