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@sarth6 sarth6 commented Dec 20, 2025

Summary

  • Add fallback_on_response parameter to FallbackModel for response-based fallback
  • Support streaming with response-based fallback via BufferedStreamedResponse
  • Add 15 tests covering both non-streaming and streaming scenarios

Motivation

Closes #3640

When using built-in tools like web_fetch, a model may return a successful HTTP response (no exception) but the response content indicates a semantic failure. For example, Google's WebFetchTool returns URL_RETRIEVAL_STATUS_FAILED in the response rather than throwing an exception.

This PR adds a fallback_on_response callback that inspects the response content and triggers fallback when appropriate.

Changes

FallbackModel:

  • New fallback_on_response: Callable[[ModelResponse, list[ModelMessage]], bool] | None parameter
  • When set, the callback is invoked after each successful model response
  • Returns True to reject the response and try the next model

Streaming support:

  • When fallback_on_response is set with streaming, the entire response is buffered before evaluation
  • BufferedStreamedResponse replays the buffered events to the caller
  • Trade-off documented: caller won't receive partial results until full response is ready

Example

from pydantic_ai.models.fallback import FallbackModel

def web_fetch_failed(response: ModelResponse, messages: list[ModelMessage]) -> bool:
    for call, result in response.builtin_tool_calls:
        if call.tool_name == 'web_fetch':
            content = result.content
            if isinstance(content, dict):
                status = content.get('url_retrieval_status', '')
                if status and status != 'URL_RETRIEVAL_STATUS_SUCCESS':
                    return True
    return False

fallback_model = FallbackModel(
    google_model,
    anthropic_model,
    fallback_on_response=web_fetch_failed,
)

Test plan

  • 9 non-streaming tests for fallback_on_response
  • 6 streaming tests for fallback_on_response
  • 100% test coverage maintained
  • All 32 fallback tests pass

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

sarth6 and others added 13 commits December 20, 2025 17:01
Adds response-based fallback to `FallbackModel`, allowing fallback based on
response content rather than just exceptions. This is useful when a model
returns a successful HTTP response but the content indicates a semantic
failure (e.g., a builtin tool like `web_fetch` reporting failure).

- Add `fallback_on_response: Callable[[ModelResponse, list[ModelMessage]], bool]` parameter
- Support streaming with response-based fallback via `BufferedStreamedResponse`
- Add 15 tests covering non-streaming and streaming scenarios
- Document the feature with a practical example

Closes pydantic#3640

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
Adds a new `fallback_on_part` parameter to `FallbackModel` that enables
checking each response part during streaming. This allows early abort
when failure conditions are detectable before the full response completes,
such as when a WebFetch tool fails in the first chunk.

- Adds FallbackOnPart type alias and callback parameter
- Checks parts on PartEndEvent during streaming iteration
- Can be combined with fallback_on_response for layered checks
- Tracks part_rejections separately in error reporting
- Documentation and tests for the new feature

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Changed gemini-2.0-flash to gemini-2.5-flash (2.5 is current stable)
- Kept claude-sonnet-4-5 (already current)

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
Add warning that fallback_on_part buffers the response like
fallback_on_response. The caller doesn't receive progressive
streaming—the benefit is token savings and faster fallback
when failures are detected early.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
Flatten nested conditionals using guard clauses for better readability.
The examples already use pydantic-ai types correctly via builtin_tool_calls
and isinstance checks with BuiltinToolReturnPart.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Add provider_url property to BufferedStreamedResponse
- Fix type hints from TextPart to ModelResponsePart

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Fix type hints from TextPart to ModelResponsePart for fallback_on_part callbacks
- Add isinstance checks before accessing .content on ModelResponsePart
- Add proper type annotation for dict content in web_fetch_failed test

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
The response-hooks-design.md was a planning document that shouldn't be
included in the final PR.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Add explicit imports for BuiltinToolCallPart and BuiltinToolReturnPart
- Add type annotations for loop variables
- Add dict[str, Any] annotation for content variable
- Use guard clause pattern for clearer flow

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
The test framework runs ruff linting separately from code execution.
test="skip" only skips execution, not linting. Adding lint="skip"
ensures these example snippets don't fail CI linting.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Add pragma: no branch to guard clauses in test helper
- Add pragma: no cover to unreachable lines inside pytest.raises blocks

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
- Move pragma: no cover to continue statements (the actual uncovered lines)
- Use cast(dict[str, Any], content) to fix pyright type errors

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <[email protected]>
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Response-Based Fallback for FallbackModel

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