Socratic Nexus

Universal LLM client for production - Works with Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, Llama, and any LLM.

Extracted from 18 months of production use in Socrates AI platform.

Why Socrates Nexus?

Most LLM clients handle the happy path. Socrates Nexus handles production:

• ✅ Automatic retry logic with exponential backoff (timeouts, rate limits, temporary errors)
• ✅ Token usage tracking - Know exactly what you're spending across providers
• ✅ Streaming support with helpers (not fighting with raw streams)
• ✅ Async + sync APIs - Choose what works for you
• ✅ Multi-model fallback - If Claude is down, try GPT-4
• ✅ Type hints throughout - Better IDE experience
• ✅ Universal API - Same code works with Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, Llama

Framework Integrations

Use with Openclaw

pip install socrates-nexus[openclaw]

from socrates_nexus.integrations.openclaw import NexusLLMSkill

skill = NexusLLMSkill(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus")
response = skill.query("What is machine learning?")

# Switch providers with one line
skill.switch_provider("openai", "gpt-4")

Use with LangChain

pip install socrates-nexus[langchain]

from socrates_nexus.integrations.langchain import SocratesNexusLLM
from langchain.chains import LLMChain

llm = SocratesNexusLLM(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus")
chain = LLMChain(llm=llm, prompt=template)

# Easy provider switching in chains
llm2 = SocratesNexusLLM(provider="openai", model="gpt-4")

The Socrates Ecosystem

Socrates Nexus is the foundation of the Socrates Ecosystem - a collection of production-grade AI packages that work together and integrate with popular frameworks.

Packages Built on Socrates Nexus

Package	Purpose	Status	Link
Socratic RAG	Knowledge retrieval & management	✅ v0.1.0	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-rag
Socratic Analyzer	Code analysis & quality scoring	✅ v0.1.0	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-analyzer
Socratic Agents	Multi-agent orchestration (18 agents)	🚀 Q4 2026	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-agents
Socratic Workflow	Workflow optimization & cost calc	🚀 Q4 2026	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-workflow
Socratic Knowledge	Enterprise knowledge management	🚀 Q1 2027	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-knowledge
Socratic Learning	Continuous improvement engine	🚀 Q1 2027	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-learning
Socratic Conflict	Conflict detection & resolution	🚀 Q1 2027	github.com/Nireus79/Socratic-conflict

How They Work Together

All packages use Socrates Nexus as their LLM foundation:

Socrates Nexus (Universal LLM Client)
         ↓
    ┌────┼────┬─────────┬────────┐
    ↓    ↓    ↓         ↓        ↓
   RAG  Analyzer  Agents  Workflow  Knowledge

   All packages available as:
   - Standalone packages
   - Openclaw skills
   - LangChain components

Getting Started with the Ecosystem

Just need LLM switching?

pip install socrates-nexus

Building a knowledge system?

pip install socratic-rag
# Socrates Nexus installed automatically

Analyzing code projects?

pip install socratic-analyzer
# Uses Socrates Nexus for insights

Want the full stack?

pip install socratic-rag socratic-analyzer
# Both use Socrates Nexus + Openclaw/LangChain integrations

👉 Full ecosystem documentation: See ECOSYSTEM.md

Quick Start

Installation

# Install with Claude support
pip install socrates-nexus[anthropic]

# Or with all providers
pip install socrates-nexus[all]

Basic Usage

from socrates_nexus import LLMClient

# Create client for any LLM
client = LLMClient(
    provider="anthropic",
    model="claude-opus",
    api_key="your-api-key"
)

# Chat - automatic retries, token tracking included
response = client.chat("What is machine learning?")
print(response.content)
print(f"Cost: ${response.usage.cost_usd}")

Multiple Providers (Same API)

from socrates_nexus import LLMClient

# Claude
claude = LLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus", api_key="sk-ant-...")

# GPT-4
gpt4 = LLMClient(provider="openai", model="gpt-4", api_key="sk-...")

# Gemini
gemini = LLMClient(provider="google", model="gemini-pro", api_key="...")

# Llama (local)
llama = LLMClient(provider="ollama", model="llama2", base_url="http://localhost:11434")

# All use the same API!
for client in [claude, gpt4, gemini, llama]:
    response = client.chat("Hello!")
    print(f"{client.config.provider}: {response.content}")

Streaming

client = LLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus", api_key="...")

def on_chunk(chunk):
    print(chunk, end="", flush=True)

response = client.stream("Write a poem about AI", on_chunk=on_chunk)
print(f"\n\nTotal cost: ${response.usage.cost_usd}")

Async

import asyncio
from socrates_nexus import AsyncLLMClient

async def main():
    client = AsyncLLMClient(
        provider="anthropic",
        model="claude-opus",
        api_key="..."
    )

    # Concurrent requests
    responses = await asyncio.gather(
        client.chat("Query 1"),
        client.chat("Query 2"),
        client.chat("Query 3"),
    )

    for response in responses:
        print(response.content)

asyncio.run(main())

Configuration

Common Configuration Options

from socrates_nexus import LLMClient, LLMConfig

config = LLMConfig(
    # Provider and model
    provider="anthropic",
    model="claude-opus",
    api_key="sk-ant-...",

    # Retry behavior
    retry_attempts=3,
    retry_backoff_factor=2.0,
    request_timeout=60,

    # Response caching
    cache_responses=True,
    cache_ttl=300,  # 5 minutes

    # Optional
    temperature=0.7,
    max_tokens=1024,
)

client = LLMClient(config=config)

Environment Variables

Socrates Nexus automatically reads these if config not provided:

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY - Anthropic Claude
• OPENAI_API_KEY - OpenAI GPT
• GOOGLE_API_KEY - Google Gemini
• ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL - Custom Anthropic endpoint
• OPENAI_BASE_URL - Custom OpenAI endpoint

Error Handling

Socrates Nexus provides specific exception types for programmatic error handling:

from socrates_nexus import (
    NexusError,
    RateLimitError,
    AuthenticationError,
    InvalidAPIKeyError,
    TimeoutError,
    ContextLengthExceededError,
    ModelNotFoundError,
)

try:
    response = client.chat("Query")
except RateLimitError as e:
    print(f"Rate limited. Retry after {e.retry_after} seconds")
except AuthenticationError as e:
    print(f"Auth failed: {e.message}")
except ContextLengthExceededError as e:
    print(f"Input too long: {e.message}")
except NexusError as e:
    print(f"LLM Error ({e.error_code}): {e.message}")

All exceptions include:

• message - Human-readable error description
• error_code - Machine-readable error code
• context - Dict with provider-specific details

Key Features

1. Automatic Retries

Handles transient failures automatically:

• Rate limits (HTTP 429)
• Timeout errors
• Temporary server errors (5xx)
• Exponential backoff with jitter

client = LLMClient(
    provider="anthropic",
    model="claude-opus",
    api_key="...",
    retry_attempts=3,           # Number of retries
    retry_backoff_factor=2.0,   # Exponential backoff multiplier
)

2. Token Tracking

Track usage and costs across all providers:

response = client.chat("Query")

print(f"Input tokens: {response.usage.input_tokens}")
print(f"Output tokens: {response.usage.output_tokens}")
print(f"Total cost: ${response.usage.cost_usd}")

# Get cumulative stats
stats = client.get_usage_stats()
print(f"Total spent: ${stats.total_cost_usd}")

3. Multi-LLM Fallback & Resilience

Build resilient applications with multiple fallback strategies:

Sequential Fallback - Try providers in order:

def safe_chat(message: str):
    providers = [
        {"provider": "anthropic", "model": "claude-opus", "api_key": "..."},
        {"provider": "openai", "model": "gpt-4", "api_key": "..."},
        {"provider": "google", "model": "gemini-pro", "api_key": "..."},
    ]

    for config in providers:
        try:
            client = LLMClient(**config)
            return client.chat(message)
        except Exception:
            continue
    raise Exception("All providers failed")

Parallel Fallback - Try all at once, use first successful:

import asyncio
from socrates_nexus import AsyncLLMClient

async def parallel_fallback(message: str):
    clients = [
        AsyncLLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus", api_key="..."),
        AsyncLLMClient(provider="openai", model="gpt-4", api_key="..."),
    ]

    results = await asyncio.gather(
        *[c.chat(message) for c in clients],
        return_exceptions=True
    )

    for result in results:
        if not isinstance(result, Exception):
            return result

4. Token Usage Tracking

Real-time cost tracking with provider breakdowns:

client = LLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-opus", api_key="...")

# Track per-request
response = client.chat("What is Python?")
print(f"This request cost: ${response.usage.cost_usd:.6f}")
print(f"Input tokens: {response.usage.input_tokens}")
print(f"Output tokens: {response.usage.output_tokens}")

# Track cumulative usage
stats = client.get_usage_stats()
print(f"Total spent across all requests: ${stats.total_cost_usd:.2f}")
print(f"Total requests: {stats.total_requests}")

# Per-provider breakdown
for provider, p_stats in stats.by_provider.items():
    print(f"{provider}: {p_stats['requests']} requests, ${p_stats['cost_usd']:.2f}")

# Custom tracking callbacks
def log_expensive_requests(usage):
    if usage.cost_usd > 0.01:
        print(f"Expensive request: ${usage.cost_usd:.6f}")

client.add_usage_callback(log_expensive_requests)

5. Response Caching

Cache identical requests to save cost and time:

client = LLMClient(
    provider="anthropic",
    model="claude-opus",
    api_key="...",
    cache_responses=True,
    cache_ttl=300,  # 5 minutes
)

# First call: hits API
response1 = client.chat("What is Python?")

# Second call within 5 min: uses cache (instant)
response2 = client.chat("What is Python?")

print(f"Saved: ${response1.usage.cost_usd * 0.9}")

6. Vision Models (v0.3.0+)

Analyze images with your LLM - works across all providers:

client = LLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-3-5-sonnet")

# Analyze from URL
response = client.chat(
    "What's in this image?",
    images=["https://example.com/image.jpg"]
)
print(response.content)

# Multiple images
response = client.chat(
    "Compare these two images",
    images=["image1.jpg", "image2.jpg"]
)

# Works with all providers
for provider in ["anthropic", "openai", "google"]:
    client = LLMClient(provider=provider)
    response = client.chat("Describe this image", images=["photo.jpg"])
    print(f"{provider}: {response.content}")

See Vision Models Guide for complete documentation.

7. Function Calling / Tool Use (v0.3.0+)

Enable LLMs to call predefined functions and integrate results:

from socrates_nexus.models import Tool, Function

# Define a tool
weather_tool = Tool(
    function=Function(
        name="get_weather",
        description="Get weather for a location",
        parameters={
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "location": {"type": "string", "description": "City name"}
            },
            "required": ["location"]
        }
    )
)

# Use tool with LLM
client = LLMClient(provider="anthropic", model="claude-3-5-sonnet")
response = client.chat(
    "What's the weather in New York?",
    tools=[weather_tool]
)

# Check if model called the tool
if response.tool_calls:
    for tool_call in response.tool_calls:
        print(f"Tool: {tool_call.function.name}")
        print(f"Arguments: {tool_call.function.arguments}")

Works with Claude, GPT-4, and Gemini. See Function Calling Guide for complete documentation.

Supported Providers

Provider	Models	API Key	Status
Anthropic	Claude 3 (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), Claude 3.5 Sonnet	Required	✅ Full
OpenAI	GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-3.5-turbo	Required	✅ Full
Google	Gemini 1.5 Pro, Gemini 1.5 Flash	Required	✅ Full
Ollama	Llama 2, Mistral, Neural Chat, Orca (local)	Not required	✅ Full

Setup Each Provider

Anthropic Claude:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."

OpenAI GPT:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

Google Gemini:

export GOOGLE_API_KEY="..."

Ollama (Local):

# Install Ollama: https://ollama.ai
ollama pull llama2
ollama serve  # Starts on http://localhost:11434
# No API key needed!

Support Development

If you find this package useful, consider supporting development:

• Become a Sponsor - Get early access to new features
• Star on GitHub - Shows your appreciation
• Report Issues - Help improve the package

Your support helps fund development of the entire Socratic ecosystem.

Examples

See the examples/ directory for complete, runnable examples:

• 01_anthropic_basic.py - Basic Claude usage, token tracking, and cost calculation
• 02_openai_gpt4.py - OpenAI GPT-4 usage with streaming
• 03_google_gemini.py - Google Gemini basic and streaming calls
• 04_ollama_local.py - Local LLM with Ollama (no API key required)
• 05_streaming.py - Streaming patterns: real-time output, chunk accumulation, progress tracking
• 06_async_calls.py - Async/await, concurrent requests, multi-provider parallel execution
• 07_token_tracking.py - Usage statistics, cost monitoring, per-provider breakdowns
• 08_error_handling.py - Error types, safe error catching, automatic retry behavior
• 09_provider_fallback.py - Provider fallback strategies: sequential, parallel, cost-optimized, model escalation
• 12_vision_models.py - Vision capabilities: image analysis from URLs/files, multiple images, provider comparison
• 13_function_calling.py - Function calling: tool definitions, multiple tools, tool execution, provider comparison

Documentation

• Quick Start - Get started in 5 minutes
• Providers Guide - Setup for each LLM provider
• Vision Models Guide - Image analysis and multimodal capabilities
• Function Calling Guide - Tool use and LLM function calling
• API Reference - Complete API documentation
• Advanced Usage - Caching, fallbacks, monitoring
• Architecture - System design and patterns
• Comparison - vs LangChain, LiteLLM, and others
• Roadmap - Feature roadmap and milestones

Development

Setup

# Clone repo
git clone https://github.com/Nireus79/socrates-nexus.git
cd socrates-nexus

# Install dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev,all]"

# Run tests
pytest tests/ -v

# Format code
black src/ tests/
ruff check src/ tests/

Testing

# All tests
pytest tests/ -v

# Only fast tests
pytest tests/ -v -m "not slow"

# With coverage
pytest tests/ --cov=socrates_nexus --cov-report=html

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch
3. Add tests for new features
4. Submit a pull request

License

MIT License - see LICENSE

Origins

Socrates Nexus is extracted from Socrates AI, a collaborative AI platform. It's battle-tested in production and used for orchestrating multiple LLMs.

Roadmap

Phase 1: Foundation (Days 1-14) ✅ Complete

• ✅ Base client structure (sync + async)
• ✅ Provider implementations (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, Ollama)
• ✅ Streaming support for all providers
• ✅ Automatic retry logic with exponential backoff
• ✅ Token tracking and cost calculation
• ✅ Response caching (TTL-based)
• ✅ Multi-provider fallback patterns
• ✅ 9 comprehensive examples
• ✅ Error handling with specific exception types

Phase 2: Enhancement (Days 15-21) ✅ Complete

• ✅ Unit tests (76% coverage achieved - 381 passing tests)
• ✅ Integration tests with mocked providers
• ✅ Vision models support (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google)
• ✅ Function calling for all providers
• ✅ GitHub Actions CI/CD with quality gates
• ✅ Security scanning and dependency updates

Phase 3: Production (Days 22+) 🔄 In Progress

• ✅ Monitoring and observability
• ✅ Rate limit optimization (automatic retries)
• ✅ GitHub Actions CI/CD (workflows complete)
• ✅ PyPI publishing setup
• ⏳ Extended model support (Cohere, Replicate, etc.)
• ⏳ Batch processing API

Phase 4: Ecosystem (Q4 2026 - Q1 2027) 🚀

• 🚀 v0.2.0 with enhanced Openclaw + LangChain integrations
• 🚀 Socratic Agents (18-agent orchestration system)
• 🚀 Socratic Workflow (optimization & cost calculation)
• 🚀 Socratic Knowledge (enterprise knowledge management)
• 🚀 Socratic Learning (continuous improvement engine)
• 🚀 Socratic Conflict (conflict detection & resolution)

📊 Project Tracking

View the complete Socrates Ecosystem Roadmap for all packages and timeline.

See also:

• PROJECT_ISSUES.md - All issues to be created
• GITHUB_PROJECT_SETUP.md - Setup instructions

See ECOSYSTEM.md for complete ecosystem details. See GITHUB_PROJECT_SETUP.md for project setup instructions.

Ecosystem & Related Packages

Socrates Nexus is the foundation of the Socrates Ecosystem. All packages below depend on Socrates Nexus and integrate seamlessly:

Production-Ready Packages ✅

• Socratic RAG - Knowledge retrieval and RAG systems (depends on Socrates Nexus)
• Socratic Analyzer - Code analysis and quality scoring (depends on Socrates Nexus)

Planned Packages 🚀

• Socratic Agents - Multi-agent orchestration with 18 agents (coming Q4 2026)
• Socratic Workflow - Workflow optimization and cost calculation (coming Q4 2026)
• Socratic Knowledge - Enterprise knowledge management (coming Q1 2027)
• Socratic Learning - Continuous learning engine (coming Q1 2027)
• Socratic Conflict - Conflict detection and resolution (coming Q1 2027)

Main Platform

• Socrates AI - Complete collaborative development platform (Socrates Nexus extracted from here)

👉 See ECOSYSTEM.md for complete ecosystem documentation

Support

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions
• Email: Hermes_creative@proton.me
• Sponsor: GitHub Sponsors

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Made with ❤️ as part of the Socrates ecosystem