youdotcom 2.3.0

The official You.com Python SDK.

The official developer-friendly & type-safe Python SDK specifically designed to leverage the You.com API.

Summary

You.com API: Unified API for Express, Advanced, and Custom Agents from You.com Get the best search results from web and news sources Returns the HTML or Markdown of a target webpage Multi-step reasoning with comprehensive research capabilities Comprehensive API for You.com services:

• Agents API: Execute queries using Express, Advanced, and Custom AI agents
• Research API: In-depth, multi-step research with citations and sources
• Search API: Get search results from web and news sources
• Contents API: Retrieve and process web page content

Table of Contents

• SDK Installation
• IDE Support
• SDK Example Usage
• Authentication
• Available Resources and Operations
• Server-sent event streaming
• Retries
• Error Handling
• Server Selection
• Custom HTTP Client
• Resource Management
• Debugging
• Development
  • Maturity
  • Testing
  • Contributions

SDK Installation

[!NOTE] Python version upgrade policy

Once a Python version reaches its official end of life date, a 3-month grace period is provided for users to upgrade. Following this grace period, the minimum python version supported in the SDK will be updated.

The SDK can be installed with uv, pip, or poetry package managers.

uv

uv is a fast Python package installer and resolver, designed as a drop-in replacement for pip and pip-tools. It's recommended for its speed and modern Python tooling capabilities.

uv add youdotcom

PIP

PIP is the default package installer for Python, enabling easy installation and management of packages from PyPI via the command line.

pip install youdotcom

Poetry

Poetry is a modern tool that simplifies dependency management and package publishing by using a single pyproject.toml file to handle project metadata and dependencies.

poetry add youdotcom

Shell and script usage with uv

You can use this SDK in a Python shell with uv and the uvx command that comes with it like so:

uvx --from youdotcom python

It's also possible to write a standalone Python script without needing to set up a whole project like so:

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = [
#     "youdotcom",
# ]
# ///

from youdotcom import You

sdk = You(
  # SDK arguments
)

# Rest of script here...

Once that is saved to a file, you can run it with uv run script.py where script.py can be replaced with the actual file name.

IDE Support

PyCharm

Generally, the SDK will work well with most IDEs out of the box. However, when using PyCharm, you can enjoy much better integration with Pydantic by installing an additional plugin.

• PyCharm Pydantic Plugin

SDK Example Usage

Example

# Synchronous Example
import os
from youdotcom import You, models


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.research(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

    # Handle response
    print(res)

The same SDK client can also be used to make asynchronous requests by importing asyncio.

# Asynchronous Example
import asyncio
import os
from youdotcom import You, models

async def main():

    async with You(
        api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
    ) as you:

        res = await you.research_async(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

        # Handle response
        print(res)

asyncio.run(main())

For more thorough examples of how to use our APIs, including typesafe patterns, see api-example-calls.py under the examples folder.

Authentication

Per-Client Security Schemes

This SDK supports the following security scheme globally:

Name	Type	Scheme	Environment Variable
api_key_auth	apiKey	API key	YOU_API_KEY_AUTH

To authenticate with the API the api_key_auth parameter must be set when initializing the SDK client instance. For example:

import os
from youdotcom import You, models


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.research(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

    # Handle response
    print(res)

Available Resources and Operations

Available methods

You SDK

• research - Returns comprehensive research-grade answers with multi-step reasoning

Agents.Runs

• create - Run an Agent

Contents

• generate - Returns the content of the web pages

Search

• unified - Returns a list of unified search results from web and news sources

Server-sent event streaming

Server-sent events are used to stream content from certain operations. These operations will expose the stream as Generator that can be consumed using a simple for loop. The loop will terminate when the server no longer has any events to send and closes the underlying connection.

The stream is also a Context Manager and can be used with the with statement and will close the underlying connection when the context is exited.

import os
from youdotcom import You
from youdotcom.models import (
    ExpressAgentRunsRequest,
    WebSearchTool,
    ResponseCreated,
    ResponseStarting,
    ResponseOutputItemAdded,
    ResponseOutputContentFull,
    ResponseOutputTextDelta,
    ResponseOutputItemDone,
    ResponseDone,
)
from youdotcom.utils import eventstreaming


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    response = you.agents.runs.create(request=ExpressAgentRunsRequest(
        input="Restaurants in San Francisco",
        stream=True,
        tools=[
            WebSearchTool()
        ]
    ))

    # Type narrow to ensure we have a streaming response
    assert isinstance(response, eventstreaming.EventStream), "Expected streaming response"
    with response as stream:
        # Iterate through the stream and handle each event type
        # Each chunk is an AgentRunsStreamingResponse with a 'data' field
        for chunk in stream:
            # The data field contains the actual event (discriminated by TYPE)
            event_data = chunk.data

            # Use isinstance() to narrow the type and handle each event
            if isinstance(event_data, ResponseCreated):
                print(f"✨ Response created (seq: {event_data.seq_id})")

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseStarting):
                print(f"🚀 Response starting (seq: {event_data.seq_id})")

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseOutputItemAdded):
                print(f"➕ Output item added: {event_data.seq_id}")

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseOutputContentFull):
                print("\n🔍 Web Search Results:")
                if event_data.response.full:
                    for idx, result in enumerate(event_data.response.full, 1):
                        print(f"  {idx}. {result.title} - {result.url}")

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseOutputTextDelta):
                # Print the delta text as it streams in (without newline)
                print(event_data.response.delta, end='', flush=True)

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseOutputItemDone):
                print(f"\n✅ Output item done (index: {event_data.response.output_index})")

            elif isinstance(event_data, ResponseDone):
                print("\n🎉 Response completed!")
                print(f"   Runtime: {event_data.response.run_time_ms} ms")
                print(f"   Finished: {event_data.response.finished}")

            else:
                print(f"⚠️  Unknown event type: {type(event_data).__name__}")

Retries

Some of the endpoints in this SDK support retries. If you use the SDK without any configuration, it will fall back to the default retry strategy provided by the API. However, the default retry strategy can be overridden on a per-operation basis, or across the entire SDK.

To change the default retry strategy for a single API call, simply provide a RetryConfig object to the call:

import os
from youdotcom import You, models
from youdotcom.utils import BackoffStrategy, RetryConfig


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.research(
        input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?",
        research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE,
        retries=RetryConfig("backoff", BackoffStrategy(1, 50, 1.1, 100), False),
    )

    # Handle response
    print(res)

If you'd like to override the default retry strategy for all operations that support retries, you can use the retry_config optional parameter when initializing the SDK:

import os
from youdotcom import You, models
from youdotcom.utils import BackoffStrategy, RetryConfig


with You(
    retry_config=RetryConfig("backoff", BackoffStrategy(1, 50, 1.1, 100), False),
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.research(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

    # Handle response
    print(res)

Error Handling

YouError is the base class for all HTTP error responses. It has the following properties:

Property	Type	Description
err.message	str	Error message
err.status_code	int	HTTP response status code eg 404
err.headers	httpx.Headers	HTTP response headers
err.body	str	HTTP body. Can be empty string if no body is returned.
err.raw_response	httpx.Response	Raw HTTP response
err.data		Optional. Some errors may contain structured data. See Error Classes.

Example

import os
from youdotcom import You, errors, models


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:
    res = None
    try:

        res = you.research(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

        # Handle response
        print(res)


    except errors.YouError as e:
        # The base class for HTTP error responses
        print(e.message)
        print(e.status_code)
        print(e.body)
        print(e.headers)
        print(e.raw_response)

        # Depending on the method different errors may be thrown
        if isinstance(e, errors.ResearchUnauthorizedError):
            print(e.data.detail)  # Optional[str]

Error Classes

Primary error:

• YouError: The base class for HTTP error responses.

Less common errors (18)

Network errors:

• httpx.RequestError: Base class for request errors.
  • httpx.ConnectError: HTTP client was unable to make a request to a server.
  • httpx.TimeoutException: HTTP request timed out.

Inherit from YouError:

• AgentRuns400ResponseError: The message returned by the error. Status code 400. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ResearchUnauthorizedError: Unauthorized. Problems with API key. Status code 401. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• SearchUnauthorizedError: Unauthorized. Problems with API key. Status code 401. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ContentsUnauthorizedError: Unauthorized. Problems with API key. Status code 401. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• AgentRuns401ResponseError: The message returned by the error. Status code 401. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ResearchForbiddenError: Forbidden. API key lacks scope for this path. Status code 403. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• SearchForbiddenError: Forbidden. API key lacks scope for this path. Status code 403. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ContentsForbiddenError: Forbidden. API key lacks scope for this path. Status code 403. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• UnprocessableEntityError: Unprocessable Entity. Request validation failed. Status code 422. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• AgentRuns422ResponseError: Unprocessable Entity - Invalid request data. Status code 422. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ResearchInternalServerError: Internal Server Error during authentication/authorization middleware. Status code 500. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• SearchInternalServerError: Internal Server Error during authentication/authorization middleware. Status code 500. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ContentsInternalServerError: Internal Server Error during authentication/authorization middleware. Status code 500. Applicable to 1 of 4 methods.*
• ResponseValidationError: Type mismatch between the response data and the expected Pydantic model. Provides access to the Pydantic validation error via the cause attribute.

* Check the method documentation to see if the error is applicable.

Server Selection

Override Server URL Per-Client

The default server can be overridden globally by passing a URL to the server_url: str optional parameter when initializing the SDK client instance. For example:

import os
from youdotcom import You, models


with You(
    server_url="https://api.you.com",
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.research(input="Which global cities improved air quality the most over the past 10 years, and what measurable actions contributed?", research_effort=models.ResearchEffort.LITE)

    # Handle response
    print(res)

Override Server URL Per-Operation

The server URL can also be overridden on a per-operation basis, provided a server list was specified for the operation. For example:

import os
from youdotcom import You, models


with You(
    api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
) as you:

    res = you.search.unified(query="Your query", count=10, language=models.Language.EN, server_url="https://ydc-index.io")

    # Handle response
    print(res)

Custom HTTP Client

The Python SDK makes API calls using the httpx HTTP library. In order to provide a convenient way to configure timeouts, cookies, proxies, custom headers, and other low-level configuration, you can initialize the SDK client with your own HTTP client instance. Depending on whether you are using the sync or async version of the SDK, you can pass an instance of HttpClient or AsyncHttpClient respectively, which are Protocol's ensuring that the client has the necessary methods to make API calls. This allows you to wrap the client with your own custom logic, such as adding custom headers, logging, or error handling, or you can just pass an instance of httpx.Client or httpx.AsyncClient directly.

For example, you could specify a header for every request that this sdk makes as follows:

from youdotcom import You
import httpx

http_client = httpx.Client(headers={"x-custom-header": "someValue"})
s = You(client=http_client)

or you could wrap the client with your own custom logic:

from youdotcom import You
from youdotcom.httpclient import AsyncHttpClient
import httpx

class CustomClient(AsyncHttpClient):
    client: AsyncHttpClient

    def __init__(self, client: AsyncHttpClient):
        self.client = client

    async def send(
        self,
        request: httpx.Request,
        *,
        stream: bool = False,
        auth: Union[
            httpx._types.AuthTypes, httpx._client.UseClientDefault, None
        ] = httpx.USE_CLIENT_DEFAULT,
        follow_redirects: Union[
            bool, httpx._client.UseClientDefault
        ] = httpx.USE_CLIENT_DEFAULT,
    ) -> httpx.Response:
        request.headers["Client-Level-Header"] = "added by client"

        return await self.client.send(
            request, stream=stream, auth=auth, follow_redirects=follow_redirects
        )

    def build_request(
        self,
        method: str,
        url: httpx._types.URLTypes,
        *,
        content: Optional[httpx._types.RequestContent] = None,
        data: Optional[httpx._types.RequestData] = None,
        files: Optional[httpx._types.RequestFiles] = None,
        json: Optional[Any] = None,
        params: Optional[httpx._types.QueryParamTypes] = None,
        headers: Optional[httpx._types.HeaderTypes] = None,
        cookies: Optional[httpx._types.CookieTypes] = None,
        timeout: Union[
            httpx._types.TimeoutTypes, httpx._client.UseClientDefault
        ] = httpx.USE_CLIENT_DEFAULT,
        extensions: Optional[httpx._types.RequestExtensions] = None,
    ) -> httpx.Request:
        return self.client.build_request(
            method,
            url,
            content=content,
            data=data,
            files=files,
            json=json,
            params=params,
            headers=headers,
            cookies=cookies,
            timeout=timeout,
            extensions=extensions,
        )

s = You(async_client=CustomClient(httpx.AsyncClient()))

Resource Management

The You class implements the context manager protocol and registers a finalizer function to close the underlying sync and async HTTPX clients it uses under the hood. This will close HTTP connections, release memory and free up other resources held by the SDK. In short-lived Python programs and notebooks that make a few SDK method calls, resource management may not be a concern. However, in longer-lived programs, it is beneficial to create a single SDK instance via a context manager and reuse it across the application.

import os
from youdotcom import You
def main():

    with You(
        api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
    ) as you:
        # Rest of application here...


# Or when using async:
async def amain():

    async with You(
        api_key_auth=os.getenv("YOU_API_KEY_AUTH", ""),
    ) as you:
        # Rest of application here...

Debugging

You can setup your SDK to emit debug logs for SDK requests and responses.

You can pass your own logger class directly into your SDK.

from youdotcom import You
import logging

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
s = You(debug_logger=logging.getLogger("youdotcom"))

You can also enable a default debug logger by setting an environment variable YOU_DEBUG to true.

Development

Maturity

This SDK is in beta, and there may be breaking changes between versions without a major version update. Therefore, we recommend pinning usage to a specific package version. This way, you can install the same version each time without breaking changes unless you are intentionally looking for the latest version.

Testing

The SDK includes a comprehensive test suite that covers all API endpoints with success and error scenarios. Tests are written using pytest and run against a mock server.

To run the test suite:

./scripts/run_tests.sh

This script automatically:

• Starts the mock server (requires Go or Docker)
• Sets up a Python virtual environment
• Installs dependencies
• Runs all tests
• Cleans up the mock server

By default, the virtual environment is kept for faster subsequent test runs. To remove it after tests complete:

./scripts/run_tests.sh --cleanup
# or
./scripts/run_tests.sh -c

For more details on testing, see the tests README.

Contributions

While we value open-source contributions to this SDK, this library is generated programmatically. Any manual changes added to internal files will be overwritten on the next generation. We look forward to hearing your feedback. Feel free to open a PR or an issue with a proof of concept and we'll do our best to include it in a future release.

SDK Created by Speakeasy