ChatPromptTemplate formatting is breaking Claude 3.5 Sonnet calls

[jeffplourd]

Checked other resources

• I added a very descriptive title to this issue.
• I searched the LangChain.js documentation with the integrated search.
• I used the GitHub search to find a similar question and didn't find it.
• I am sure that this is a bug in LangChain.js rather than my code.
• The bug is not resolved by updating to the latest stable version of LangChain (or the specific integration package).

Example Code

Here's the code that's throwing the error:

const chain = await this.aiService.createChain({
        modelName,
});

const summary = await chain.invoke(params);

Here's createChain's implementation for reference:

async createChain(options: ChainOptions) {
    const { hubId, modelName, temperature, maxTokens } = options;

    const prompt = await this.getPrompt(hubId); // ChatPromptTemplate
    const model = this.createModel({ modelName, temperature, maxTokens }); // ChatAnthropic
    const parser = new StringOutputParser();

    return prompt.pipe(model).pipe(parser);
}

private createModel(options: ModelOptions) {
    const { modelName } = options;

    return new ChatAnthropic({
      modelName,
    });
}

async getPrompt(hubId: string) {
    return hub.pull<ChatPromptTemplate>(hubId);
}

Error Message and Stack Trace (if applicable)

400 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"invalid_request_error","message":"messages: text content blocks must be non-empty"}}

Error: 400 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"invalid_request_error","message":"messages: text content blocks must be non-empty"}}
at Function.generate (/Users/jeffplourd/Desktop/engineering/snorkl-backend/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/sdk/src/error.ts:61:14)
at Anthropic.makeStatusError (/Users/jeffplourd/Desktop/engineering/snorkl-backend/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/sdk/src/core.ts:397:21)
at Anthropic.makeRequest (/Users/jeffplourd/Desktop/engineering/snorkl-backend/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/sdk/src/core.ts:460:24)
at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
at makeCompletionRequest (/Users/jeffplourd/Desktop/engineering/snorkl-backend/node_modules/@langchain/anthropic/dist/chat_models.cjs:805:24)
at RetryOperation._fn (/Users/jeffplourd/Desktop/engineering/snorkl-backend/node_modules/p-retry/index.js:50:12)

Description

I'm fetching a template from LangHub that looks something like this...

When I fetch the template locally as a ChatPromptTemplate then manually "formatMessage," I get the following:

  [
  SystemMessage {
    "content": "You are an expert math teacher who evaluates student work….",
    "additional_kwargs": {},
    "response_metadata": {}
  },
  HumanMessage {
    "content": [
      {
        "text": "Here is the math problem:",
        "type": "text"
      },
      {
        "text": "\"x - 20 = 100\n\nWhat does x equal?\n\na. 10\nb. 20\nc. 100\nd. 120\"",
        "type": "text"
      },
      {
        "text": "",
        "type": "text"
      },
       {
        "text": "Here is the student's whiteboard:",
        "type": "text"
      },
      {
        "image_url": {
          "url":<image url (removing here for security purposes>"
        },
        "type": "image_url"
      }
    ],
    "additional_kwargs": {},
    "response_metadata": {}
  }
]

Notice the empty text value:
{
"text": "",
"type": "text"
},

The ChatPromptTemplate appears to be converting newlines in the prompt template to these empty string items in the formatted messages.

Summary: Claude requires that each of the items in the message content array have non-empty values. The way the ChatPromptTemplate is formatting the message causes Claude to reject them and throw an error.

System Info

[email protected] | MIT | deps: 12 | versions: 301
Typescript bindings for langchain
https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchainjs/tree/main/langchain/

keywords: llm, ai, gpt3, chain, prompt, prompt engineering, chatgpt, machine learning, ml, openai, embeddings, vectorstores

dist
.tarball: https://registry.npmjs.org/langchain/-/langchain-0.3.6.tgz
.shasum: f4313d202ce168d29bfcf81a551147cd4986779f
.integrity: sha512-erZOIKXzwCOrQHqY9AyjkQmaX62zUap1Sigw1KrwMUOnVoLKkVNRmAyxFlNZDZ9jLs/58MaQcaT9ReJtbj3x6w==
.unpackedSize: 2.9 MB

dependencies:
@langchain/openai: >=0.1.0 <0.4.0 js-tiktoken: ^1.0.12 jsonpointer: ^5.0.1 openapi-types: ^12.1.3 uuid: ^10.0.0 zod-to-json-schema: ^3.22.3
@langchain/textsplitters: >=0.0.0 <0.2.0 js-yaml: ^4.1.0 langsmith: ^0.2.0 p-retry: 4 yaml: ^2.2.1 zod: ^3.22.4

maintainers:

• nfcampos [email protected]
• jacoblee93 [email protected]
• andrewnguonly [email protected]
• davidduong [email protected]
• hwchase17 [email protected]
• basproul [email protected]

dist-tags:
latest: 0.3.6 next: 0.3.2-rc.0 tag-for-publishing-older-releases: 0.2.20

published 12 hours ago by jacoblee93 [email protected]

[dosubot]

To resolve the issue where the ChatPromptTemplate in LangChain.js is causing empty text content blocks, leading to a "messages: text content blocks must be non-empty" error with Claude 3.5 Sonnet calls, you need to ensure that all message content blocks are non-empty before they are processed.

In your code, you should add checks to ensure that text content is non-empty. Here's an example of how you can modify your code to handle this:

if (typeof castMsg.content === "string" && castMsg.content !== "") {
  assistantMsg.content?.push({
    text: castMsg.content,
  });
} else if (Array.isArray(castMsg.content)) {
  const contentBlocks: ContentBlock[] = castMsg.content.map((block) => {
    if (block.type === "text" && block.text !== "") {
      return {
        text: block.text,
      };
    } else {
      const blockValues = Object.fromEntries(
        Object.values(block).filter(([key]) => key !== "type")
      );
      throw new Error(
        `Unsupported content block type: ${
          block.type
        } with content of ${JSON.stringify(blockValues, null, 2)}`
      );
    }
  });
  assistantMsg.content = [
    ...(assistantMsg.content ? assistantMsg.content : []),
    ...contentBlocks,
  ];
}

Ensure that when you create or modify messages, you check that any text content is not an empty string. If you encounter an empty string, you should either provide a default non-empty value or skip adding that content block to the message. This will prevent the error from occurring ^[1].

To continue talking to Dosu, mention @dosu.

[jeffplourd]

While the above is correct, it doesn't seem like something I should be handling in my code. When I chain a ChatTemplatePrompt instance together with the ChatAnthropic this process is taking place under-the-hood from my perspective, so I would imagine ChatTemplatePrompt should be handling.

[dosubot]

Hi, @jeffplourd. I'm Dosu, and I'm helping the LangChain JS team manage their backlog. I'm marking this issue as stale.

Issue Summary:

• You reported a bug with ChatPromptTemplate causing errors due to empty text content blocks when using Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
• I suggested ensuring all message content blocks are non-empty before processing, with a code example provided.
• You responded that this should be managed internally by ChatTemplatePrompt, as ChatAnthropic should handle such cases automatically.

Next Steps:

• Could you confirm if this issue is still relevant with the latest version of LangChain JS? If so, please comment to keep the discussion open.
• If there is no further activity, this issue will be automatically closed in 7 days.

Thank you for your understanding and contribution!

[jacoblee93]

We've pushed a fix to the backend that fixes this - you'll need to edit and save your prompt again but it should store the content blocks in a friendlier representation. Let us know how that works for you!