How to summarize text in a single LLM call

LLMs can summarize and otherwise distill desired information from text, including large volumes of text. In many cases, especially for models with larger context windows, this can be adequately achieved via a single LLM call.

LangChain implements a simple pre-built chain that "stuffs" a prompt with the desired context for summarization and other purposes. In this guide we demonstrate how to use the chain.

Load chat model

Let's first load a chat model:

OpenAI

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini")

Anthropic

pip install -qU langchain-anthropic

import getpass
import os

os.environ["ANTHROPIC_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_anthropic import ChatAnthropic

llm = ChatAnthropic(model="claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620")

Azure

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_openai import AzureChatOpenAI

llm = AzureChatOpenAI(
    azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"],
    azure_deployment=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME"],
    openai_api_version=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION"],
)

Google

pip install -qU langchain-google-vertexai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["GOOGLE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_google_vertexai import ChatVertexAI

llm = ChatVertexAI(model="gemini-1.5-flash")

Cohere

pip install -qU langchain-cohere

import getpass
import os

os.environ["COHERE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_cohere import ChatCohere

llm = ChatCohere(model="command-r-plus")

NVIDIA

pip install -qU langchain-nvidia-ai-endpoints

import getpass
import os

os.environ["NVIDIA_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain import ChatNVIDIA

llm = ChatNVIDIA(model="meta/llama3-70b-instruct")

FireworksAI

pip install -qU langchain-fireworks

import getpass
import os

os.environ["FIREWORKS_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_fireworks import ChatFireworks

llm = ChatFireworks(model="accounts/fireworks/models/llama-v3p1-70b-instruct")

Groq

pip install -qU langchain-groq

import getpass
import os

os.environ["GROQ_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_groq import ChatGroq

llm = ChatGroq(model="llama3-8b-8192")

MistralAI

pip install -qU langchain-mistralai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["MISTRAL_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_mistralai import ChatMistralAI

llm = ChatMistralAI(model="mistral-large-latest")

TogetherAI

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

os.environ["TOGETHER_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

llm = ChatOpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.together.xyz/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["TOGETHER_API_KEY"],
    model="mistralai/Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1",
)

Load documents

Next, we need some documents to summarize. Below, we generate some toy documents for illustrative purposes. See the document loader how-to guides and integration pages for additional sources of data. The summarization tutorial also includes an example summarizing a blog post.

from langchain_core.documents import Document

documents = [
    Document(page_content="Apples are red", metadata={"title": "apple_book"}),
    Document(page_content="Blueberries are blue", metadata={"title": "blueberry_book"}),
    Document(page_content="Bananas are yelow", metadata={"title": "banana_book"}),
]

API Reference:Document

Load chain

Below, we define a simple prompt and instantiate the chain with our chat model and documents:

from langchain.chains.combine_documents import create_stuff_documents_chain
from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate

prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_template("Summarize this content: {context}")
chain = create_stuff_documents_chain(llm, prompt)

API Reference:create_stuff_documents_chain | ChatPromptTemplate

Invoke chain

Because the chain is a Runnable, it implements the usual methods for invocation:

result = chain.invoke({"context": documents})
result

'The content describes the colors of three fruits: apples are red, blueberries are blue, and bananas are yellow.'

Streaming

Note that the chain also supports streaming of individual output tokens:

for chunk in chain.stream({"context": documents}):
    print(chunk, end="|")

|The| content| describes| the| colors| of| three| fruits|:| apples| are| red|,| blueberries| are| blue|,| and| bananas| are| yellow|.||

Next steps

See the summarization how-to guides for additional summarization strategies, including those designed for larger volumes of text.

See also this tutorial for more detail on summarization.