Cohere SDK Integration Patterns
Overview
Wrap generated SDK clients behind a small application contract so model changes, provider errors, and migrations stay localized.
Prerequisites
- The target repository, runtime, environment, and accountable owner
- An approved Cohere team and key for any live verification
- Current quality, security, privacy, capacity, and change-control requirements
Tool Discipline
Use Read, Glob, and Grep to inspect code, configuration, and evidence. Use WebFetch only for current Cohere primary documentation. Use Write or Edit only when the user requested implementation and the exact target files are known; never write credentials or customer content.
Current Contract
- Instantiate one configured v2 client per runtime process unless tenancy requires a separate credential boundary.
- Require callers to supply an operation purpose, bounded timeout, and resolved model ID.
- Retry only transient transport,
429, and eligible5xxfailures with jitter and a total-attempt ceiling. - Normalize Chat content, citations, tool calls, Embed vectors, Rerank scores, usage, and provider request metadata at the boundary.
Authentication
Use an environment-specific key injected from an approved secret manager. Never print, persist, commit, or place CO_API_KEY in an example. Confirm access with the least costly bounded operation appropriate to the task, and treat key creation, rotation, revocation, role changes, and production-capacity requests as owner-approved actions.
Instructions
- Inventory current direct SDK calls and group them by Chat, Embed, Rerank, and model discovery.
- Define typed request and result contracts that expose only application-required fields.
- Centralize timeout, redaction, retry eligibility, and model resolution.
- Implement streaming as an async iterator with cancellation and terminal-event validation.
- Add contract fixtures for success, partial stream, timeout, limit, and schema drift.
- Migrate one call site at a time and delete direct SDK access only after parity tests pass.
Approval Boundaries
Do not expose or rotate keys, change Cohere Team roles, accept commercial terms, enable sensitive production data, increase spend or capacity, switch production models, send a support bundle, or execute model-proposed side effects without the accountable owner's approval. Keep diagnosis read-only unless implementation was requested.
Output
Return the resolved API and model contract, files or settings inspected, evidence collected, validation result, remaining risk, owner, and rollback or next action. Redact keys, authorization headers, prompts, retrieved documents, embeddings, customer identifiers, and unrestricted environment output.
Error Handling
| Condition | Response |
|---|---|
| Unknown event | Preserve it in diagnostics and fail the affected stream safely. |
| Retry storm | Enforce jitter, an attempt ceiling, and a shared concurrency budget. |
| Type drift | Update the adapter against the pinned SDK and add a fixture. |
| Empty content | Treat it as an invalid result unless the operation expected tool calls. |
Examples
Use this compact handoff shape to keep the selected scope, validation evidence, and operational result reviewable.
Input:
operations=chat,embed,rerank; timeout=15s; retries=2; stream-cancel=true
Expected handoff:
adapter=typed; direct-sdk-calls=0; fixtures=pass; retry-budget=bounded