chat_databricks: Chat with a model hosted on Databricks

In ellmer: Chat with Large Language Models

Chat with a model hosted on Databricks

Description

Databricks provides out-of-the-box access to a number of foundation models and can also serve as a gateway for external models hosted by a third party.

Built on top of chat_openai_compatible().

Authentication

chat_databricks() picks up on ambient Databricks credentials for a subset of the Databricks client unified authentication model. Specifically, it supports:

• Personal access tokens

• Service principals via OAuth (OAuth M2M)

• User account via OAuth (OAuth U2M)

• Authentication via the Databricks CLI

• Posit Workbench-managed credentials

• Viewer-based credentials on Posit Connect. Requires the connectcreds package.

Usage

chat_databricks(
  workspace = databricks_workspace(),
  system_prompt = NULL,
  model = NULL,
  token = NULL,
  params = NULL,
  api_args = list(),
  echo = c("none", "output", "all"),
  api_headers = character()
)

Arguments

workspace	The URL of a Databricks workspace, e.g. "https://example.cloud.databricks.com". Will use the value of the environment variable DATABRICKS_HOST, if set.
system_prompt	A system prompt to set the behavior of the assistant.
model	The model to use for the chat (defaults to "databricks-claude-sonnet-4-6"). We regularly update the default, so we strongly recommend explicitly specifying a model for anything other than casual use. Available foundational models include: databricks-claude-sonnet-4-6 (the default) ⁠databricks-mixtral-8x7b-instruct⁠ ⁠databricks-meta-llama-3-1-70b-instruct⁠ ⁠databricks-meta-llama-3-1-405b-instruct⁠
token	An authentication token for the Databricks workspace, or NULL to use ambient credentials.
params	Common model parameters, usually created by params().
api_args	Named list of arbitrary extra arguments appended to the body of every chat API call. Combined with the body object generated by ellmer with modifyList().
echo	One of the following options: none: don't emit any output (default when running in a function). output: echo text and tool-calling output as it streams in (default when running at the console). all: echo all input and output. Note this only affects the chat() method.
api_headers	Named character vector of arbitrary extra headers appended to every chat API call.

Value

A Chat object.

See Also

Other chatbots: chat_anthropic(), chat_aws_bedrock(), chat_azure_openai(), chat_cloudflare(), chat_deepseek(), chat_github(), chat_google_gemini(), chat_groq(), chat_huggingface(), chat_lmstudio(), chat_mistral(), chat_ollama(), chat_openai(), chat_openai_compatible(), chat_openrouter(), chat_perplexity(), chat_portkey(), chat_posit()

Examples

## Not run: 
chat <- chat_databricks()
chat$chat("Tell me three jokes about statisticians")

## End(Not run)

ellmer documentation built on July 14, 2026, 1:07 a.m.