Introduction
Outlines is a structured generation library that mirrors Python’s type system: specify the desired output type and Outlines ensures LLM outputs match that structure exactly.
Key features
- Type-driven interface (Literal, Pydantic models, etc.) to constrain generation results.
- Support for many providers and backends (OpenAI, vLLM, transformers, Ollama) with extensive examples and docs.
- Streaming outputs, function-calling, nested structures, and batch generation support.
Use cases
- Convert unstructured text into validated structured data (support tickets, product classification, event extraction).
- Portable extraction logic across providers for production-grade pipelines.
- Integration with data pipelines, API gateways, or downstream validation systems.
Technical details
- Primarily Python-based; the repo includes examples, documentation (ReadTheDocs) and test suites, licensed under Apache-2.0.
- Provides performance optimizations and batch generation capabilities for high-throughput use cases.
- Active community, frequent releases, and enterprise options provided by .txt.