dspy.configure¶

Set the default language model, adapter, and other settings for DSPy.

dspy.configure(**kwargs)

Call dspy.configure(...) once near the top of your script or notebook. Every DSPy module will use these defaults unless you override them with dspy.context. The values persist until you call dspy.configure(...) again.

Note

Pass a dspy.LM object as lm, not a bare model string.

Settings¶

Setting	Default	Description
`lm`	`None`	Default language model. Pass a `dspy.LM` instance.
`adapter`	`None`	Formats prompts and parses LM responses. When `None`, modules use `dspy.ChatAdapter`.
`callbacks`	`[]`	Observability and logging hooks. See Observability.
`track_usage`	`False`	Record token counts for every LM call.
`async_max_workers`	`8`	Maximum concurrent workers for async operations.
`num_threads`	`8`	Thread count for `dspy.Parallel`.
`max_errors`	`10`	Stop parallel execution after this many errors.
`disable_history`	`False`	Stop recording LM call history.
`max_history_size`	`10000`	Cap on stored history entries.
`allow_tool_async_sync_conversion`	`False`	Let async tools run in synchronous code. See Async.
`provide_traceback`	`False`	Include Python tracebacks in error logs.
`warn_on_type_mismatch`	`True`	Warn when a module input type does not match the signature.

Examples¶

Set the default LM¶

import dspy

dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-5-mini"))

qa = dspy.Predict("question -> answer")
result = qa(question="What is the capital of France?")
print(result.answer)

Set the LM and adapter¶

import dspy

dspy.configure(
    lm=dspy.LM("anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6"),
    adapter=dspy.JSONAdapter(),
)

Enable usage tracking and tune concurrency¶

import dspy

dspy.configure(
    lm=dspy.LM("gemini/gemini-3-flash-preview"),
    track_usage=True,
    async_max_workers=4,
)

When to use `dspy.configure`¶

Use dspy.configure(...) when one set of defaults should apply to most of your program—scripts, notebooks, test setup, or application startup.

If you need different settings for one call or one block, use dspy.context instead.

Thread safety¶

Only the thread that first calls dspy.configure(...) may call it again. Other threads that try will get a RuntimeError. In async code, only the task that first called dspy.configure(...) may continue to call it.

For temporary overrides inside worker threads, async tasks, or dspy.Parallel blocks, use dspy.context.