💎 ruby-spacy
Overview
ruby-spacy is a wrapper module for using spaCy from the Ruby programming language via PyCall. This module aims to make it easy and natural for Ruby programmers to use spaCy. This module covers the areas of spaCy functionality for using many varieties of its language models, not for building ones.
| Functionality | |
|---|---|
| ✅ | Tokenization, lemmatization, sentence segmentation |
| ✅ | Part-of-speech tagging and dependency parsing |
| ✅ | Named entity recognition |
| ✅ | Syntactic dependency visualization |
| ✅ | Syntax tree visualization (via rsyntaxtree) |
| ✅ | Access to pre-trained word vectors |
| ✅ | LLM integration: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and local models |
Current Version: 0.7.0
- Ruby 3.2 to 4.0 supported (PyCall 1.5.3 or later required)
- spaCy 3.8 supported
- Syntax trees drawn with rsyntaxtree, including right-to-left languages
- Multi-provider LLM API: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and local models via Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible server
- Structured outputs (JSON Schema) support
- Block-based LLM API with linguistic analysis
Installation of Prerequisites
IMPORTANT: Make sure that the enable-shared option is enabled in your Python installation. You can use pyenv to install any version of Python you like. spaCy 3.8 supports Python 3.10 and later (wheels are provided for Python 3.10–3.14), so we recommend using one of those versions. Install Python 3.13, for instance, using pyenv with enable-shared as follows:
$ env CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-shared" pyenv install 3.13Remember to make it accessible from your working directory. It is recommended that you set global to the version of python you just installed.
$ pyenv global 3.13Then, install spaCy. If you use pip, the following command will do:
$ pip install spacyInstall trained language models. For a starter, en_core_web_sm will be the most useful to conduct basic text processing in English. However, if you want to use advanced features of spaCy, such as named entity recognition or document similarity calculation, you should also install a larger model like en_core_web_lg.
$ python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm
$ python -m spacy download en_core_web_lgSee Spacy: Models & Languages for other models in various languages. To install models for the Japanese language, for instance, you can do it as follows:
$ python -m spacy download ja_core_news_sm
$ python -m spacy download ja_core_news_lgInstallation of ruby-spacy
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'ruby-spacy'And then execute:
$ bundle install
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install ruby-spacy
Usage
See Examples below.
Using an External Pipeline
Spacy::Language.new normally loads an installed model by name. To use a language spaCy has no model for, or a pipeline you built yourself, pass an existing Python Language object instead:
py_nlp = PyCall.import_module("spacy_stanza").load_pipeline("ar")
nlp = Spacy::Language.new(py_nlp: py_nlp)
nlp.read("...").tokens # works like any other nlpThird-party packages such as spacy-stanza or spacy-udpipe are not ruby-spacy dependencies; install them yourself. model and py_nlp: are mutually exclusive.
Examples
Many of the following examples are Python-to-Ruby translations of code snippets in spaCy 101. For more examples, look inside the examples directory.
Tokenization
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Apple is looking at buying U.K. startup for $1 billion")
row = []
doc.each do |token|
row << token.text
end
headings = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: [row], headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | is | looking | at | buying | U.K. | startup | for | $ | 1 | billion |
Part-of-speech and Dependency
→ spaCy: Part-of-speech tags and dependencies
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Apple is looking at buying U.K. startup for $1 billion")
headings = ["text", "lemma", "pos", "tag", "dep"]
rows = []
doc.each do |token|
rows << [token.text, token.lemma, token.pos, token.tag, token.dep]
end
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| text | lemma | pos | tag | dep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | Apple | PROPN | NNP | nsubj |
| is | be | AUX | VBZ | aux |
| looking | look | VERB | VBG | ROOT |
| at | at | ADP | IN | prep |
| buying | buy | VERB | VBG | pcomp |
| U.K. | U.K. | PROPN | NNP | dobj |
| startup | startup | NOUN | NN | advcl |
| for | for | ADP | IN | prep |
| $ | $ | SYM | $ | quantmod |
| 1 | 1 | NUM | CD | compound |
| billion | billion | NUM | CD | pobj |
Part-of-speech and Dependency (Japanese)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("ja_core_news_lg")
doc = nlp.read("任天堂は1983年にファミコンを14,800円で発売した。")
headings = ["text", "lemma", "pos", "tag", "dep"]
rows = []
doc.each do |token|
rows << [token.text, token.lemma, token.pos, token.tag, token.dep]
end
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| text | lemma | pos | tag | dep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 任天堂 | 任天堂 | PROPN | 名詞-固有名詞-一般 | nsubj |
| は | は | ADP | 助詞-係助詞 | case |
| 1983 | 1983 | NUM | 名詞-数詞 | nummod |
| 年 | 年 | NOUN | 名詞-普通名詞-助数詞可能 | obl |
| に | に | ADP | 助詞-格助詞 | case |
| ファミコン | ファミコン | NOUN | 名詞-普通名詞-一般 | obj |
| を | を | ADP | 助詞-格助詞 | case |
| 14,800 | 14,800 | NUM | 名詞-数詞 | fixed |
| 円 | 円 | NOUN | 名詞-普通名詞-助数詞可能 | obl |
| で | で | ADP | 助詞-格助詞 | case |
| 発売 | 発売 | VERB | 名詞-普通名詞-サ変可能 | ROOT |
| し | する | AUX | 動詞-非自立可能 | aux |
| た | た | AUX | 助動詞 | aux |
| 。 | 。 | PUNCT | 補助記号-句点 | punct |
Morphology
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Apple is looking at buying U.K. startup for $1 billion")
headings = ["text", "shape", "is_alpha", "is_stop", "morphology"]
rows = []
doc.each do |token|
morph = token.morphology.map do |k, v|
"#{k} = #{v}"
end.join("\n")
rows << [token.text, token.shape, token.is_alpha, token.is_stop, morph]
end
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| text | shape | is_alpha | is_stop | morphology |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | Xxxxx | true | false | NounType = Prop Number = Sing |
| is | xx | true | true | Mood = Ind Number = Sing Person = 3 Tense = Pres VerbForm = Fin |
| looking | xxxx | true | false | Aspect = Prog Tense = Pres VerbForm = Part |
| at | xx | true | true | |
| buying | xxxx | true | false | Aspect = Prog Tense = Pres VerbForm = Part |
| U.K. | X.X. | false | false | NounType = Prop Number = Sing |
| startup | xxxx | true | false | Number = Sing |
| for | xxx | true | true | |
| $ | $ | false | false | |
| 1 | d | false | false | NumType = Card |
| billion | xxxx | true | false | NumType = Card |
Visualizing Dependency
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
sentence = "Autonomous cars shift insurance liability toward manufacturers"
doc = nlp.read(sentence)
dep_svg = doc.displacy(style: "dep", compact: false)
File.open(File.join("test_dep.svg"), "w") do |file|
file.write(dep_svg)
endOutput:
Visualizing Dependency (Compact)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
sentence = "Autonomous cars shift insurance liability toward manufacturers"
doc = nlp.read(sentence)
dep_svg = doc.displacy(style: "dep", compact: true)
File.open(File.join("test_dep_compact.svg"), "w") do |file|
file.write(dep_svg)
endOutput:
Syntax Trees
Doc#syntax_tree (and Span#syntax_tree) converts the parse into rsyntaxtree bracket notation and can render it as an image. rsyntaxtree (>= 2.4.0) is an optional dependency: gem install rsyntaxtree.
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog near the river.")
doc.syntax_tree # => "[S [%NP [DET The] [ADJ quick] ...] ...]"
File.binwrite("tree.png", doc.syntax_tree(format: :png))
doc.syntax_tree(style: :chunks) # shallow tree with noun chunks
doc.syntax_tree(morphology: true) # attach morphology tables to the leavesTwo styles are available: :projection (default; a phrase-structure-like tree projected from the head words) and :chunks (a shallow tree with noun chunks). In both, noun chunks are shaded grey, and a chunk that is also a named entity is shaded orange and labeled with the entity type (entities: false to disable). The blue and green are rsyntaxtree's default palette, not marking of any kind; only the shading carries meaning. Punctuation is omitted (punctuation: true to keep it). The format: option accepts :bracket (default), :svg, :png, :pdf, :tikz, and :json; any other keywords are passed through to rsyntaxtree (e.g. fontsize: 12).
The notation is rsyntaxtree-flavored: it can contain AVMs (#(...#)), region backgrounds (%), and in-word space joins (<>). A doc must hold a single sentence; for a multi-sentence doc, use doc.sents.map { |s| s.syntax_tree }.
Annotation schemes differ between models. spaCy's English models make the preposition the head of its phrase, so projection trees contain PP nodes. UD-style models (Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and most others) attach prepositions and particles to the noun instead, so a case-marked phrase is labeled NP and no PP appears. The labels are ruby-spacy's own, derived from the head's POS tag — spaCy supplies only tags and dependencies.
Entity highlighting requires noun chunks. An entity gets its colored background only where it coincides with a noun chunk. In languages whose models have no noun chunk iterator (Russian, Chinese, Korean, Polish, ...) entities: true highlights nothing and style: :chunks raises ArgumentError.
Right-to-left languages. spaCy ships no pipelines for Arabic, Hebrew, or other RTL languages, so one has to come from outside (see Using an External Pipeline). Their trees are drawn mirrored automatically; pass mirror: "off" to disable.
See the syntax tree gallery for rendered trees in six languages, and examples/rsyntaxtree/ for the scripts that generate them.
Named Entity Recognition
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc =nlp.read("Apple is looking at buying U.K. startup for $1 billion")
rows = []
doc.ents.each do |ent|
rows << [ent.text, ent.start_char, ent.end_char, ent.label]
end
headings = ["text", "start_char", "end_char", "label"]
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| text | start_char | end_char | label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 0 | 5 | ORG |
| U.K. | 27 | 31 | GPE |
| $1 billion | 44 | 54 | MONEY |
Named Entity Recognition (Japanese)
Ruby code:
require( "ruby-spacy")
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("ja_core_news_lg")
sentence = "任天堂は1983年にファミコンを14,800円で発売した。"
doc = nlp.read(sentence)
rows = []
doc.ents.each do |ent|
rows << [ent.text, ent.start_char, ent.end_char, ent.label]
end
headings = ["text", "start", "end", "label"]
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
print tableOutput:
| text | start | end | label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 任天堂 | 0 | 3 | ORG |
| 1983年 | 4 | 9 | DATE |
| ファミコン | 10 | 15 | PRODUCT |
| 14,800円 | 16 | 23 | MONEY |
Checking Availability of Word Vectors
→ spaCy: Word vectors and similarity
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_lg")
doc = nlp.read("dog cat banana afskfsd")
rows = []
doc.each do |token|
rows << [token.text, token.has_vector, token.vector_norm, token.is_oov]
end
headings = ["text", "has_vector", "vector_norm", "is_oov"]
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| text | has_vector | vector_norm | is_oov |
|---|---|---|---|
| dog | true | 7.0336733 | false |
| cat | true | 6.6808186 | false |
| banana | true | 6.700014 | false |
| afskfsd | false | 0.0 | true |
Similarity Calculation
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_lg")
doc1 = nlp.read("I like salty fries and hamburgers.")
doc2 = nlp.read("Fast food tastes very good.")
puts "Doc 1: " + doc1.text
puts "Doc 2: " + doc2.text
puts "Similarity: #{doc1.similarity(doc2)}"Output:
Doc 1: I like salty fries and hamburgers.
Doc 2: Fast food tastes very good.
Similarity: 0.7687607012190486
Similarity Calculation (Japanese)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("ja_core_news_lg")
ja_doc1 = nlp.read("今日は雨ばっかり降って、嫌な天気ですね。")
puts "doc1: #{ja_doc1.text}"
ja_doc2 = nlp.read("あいにくの悪天候で残念です。")
puts "doc2: #{ja_doc2.text}"
puts "Similarity: #{ja_doc1.similarity(ja_doc2)}"Output:
doc1: 今日は雨ばっかり降って、嫌な天気ですね。
doc2: あいにくの悪天候で残念です。
Similarity: 0.8684192637149641
Word Vector Calculation
Tokyo - Japan + France = Paris ?
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_lg")
tokyo = nlp.get_lexeme("Tokyo")
japan = nlp.get_lexeme("Japan")
france = nlp.get_lexeme("France")
query = tokyo.vector - japan.vector + france.vector
headings = ["rank", "text", "score"]
rows = []
results = nlp.most_similar(query, 10)
results.each_with_index do |lexeme, i|
index = (i + 1).to_s
rows << [index, lexeme.text, lexeme.score]
end
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| rank | text | score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FRANCE | 0.8346999883651733 |
| 2 | France | 0.8346999883651733 |
| 3 | france | 0.8346999883651733 |
| 4 | PARIS | 0.7703999876976013 |
| 5 | paris | 0.7703999876976013 |
| 6 | Paris | 0.7703999876976013 |
| 7 | TOULOUSE | 0.6381999850273132 |
| 8 | Toulouse | 0.6381999850273132 |
| 9 | toulouse | 0.6381999850273132 |
| 10 | marseille | 0.6370999813079834 |
Word Vector Calculation (Japanese)
東京 - 日本 + フランス = パリ ?
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
require "terminal-table"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("ja_core_news_lg")
tokyo = nlp.get_lexeme("東京")
japan = nlp.get_lexeme("日本")
france = nlp.get_lexeme("フランス")
query = tokyo.vector - japan.vector + france.vector
headings = ["rank", "text", "score"]
rows = []
results = nlp.most_similar(query, 10)
results.each_with_index do |lexeme, i|
index = (i + 1).to_s
rows << [index, lexeme.text, lexeme.score]
end
table = Terminal::Table.new rows: rows, headings: headings
puts tableOutput:
| rank | text | score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | パリ | 0.7376999855041504 |
| 2 | フランス | 0.7221999764442444 |
| 3 | 東京 | 0.6697999835014343 |
| 4 | ストラスブール | 0.631600022315979 |
| 5 | リヨン | 0.5939000248908997 |
| 6 | Paris | 0.574400007724762 |
| 7 | ベルギー | 0.5683000087738037 |
| 8 | ニース | 0.5679000020027161 |
| 9 | アルザス | 0.5644999742507935 |
| 10 | 南仏 | 0.5547999739646912 |
Matcher
Matcher finds token sequences with rule-based patterns.
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
matcher = nlp.matcher
matcher.add("GREETING", [[{ LOWER: "hello" }, { IS_PUNCT: true }, { LOWER: "world" }]])
doc = nlp.read("Hello, world!")
matcher.match(doc).each do |match|
span = doc.span(match[:start_index]..match[:end_index])
puts "#{match[:label]}: #{span.text}"
end
# => GREETING: Hello, worldMatcher#match returns an array of hashes with :match_id (the label's numeric id), :start_index, :end_index, and :label (the label string).
See examples/rule_based_matching/ for more examples.
PhraseMatcher
PhraseMatcher is more efficient than Matcher for matching large terminology lists. It's ideal for extracting known entities like product names, company names, or domain-specific terms.
Basic usage:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
# Create a phrase matcher
matcher = nlp.phrase_matcher
matcher.add("PRODUCT", ["iPhone", "MacBook Pro", "iPad"])
doc = nlp.read("I bought an iPhone and a MacBook Pro yesterday.")
matches = matcher.match(doc)
matches.each do |span|
puts "#{span.text} => #{span.label}"
end
# => iPhone => PRODUCT
# => MacBook Pro => PRODUCTCase-insensitive matching:
# Use attr: "LOWER" for case-insensitive matching
matcher = nlp.phrase_matcher(attr: "LOWER")
matcher.add("COMPANY", ["apple", "google", "microsoft"])
doc = nlp.read("Apple and GOOGLE are competitors of Microsoft.")
matches = matcher.match(doc)
matches.each do |span|
puts span.text
end
# => Apple
# => GOOGLE
# => MicrosoftMultiple categories:
matcher = nlp.phrase_matcher(attr: "LOWER")
matcher.add("TECH_COMPANY", ["apple", "google", "microsoft", "amazon"])
matcher.add("PRODUCT", ["iphone", "pixel", "surface", "kindle"])
doc = nlp.read("Apple released the new iPhone while Google announced Pixel updates.")
matches = matcher.match(doc)
matches.each do |span|
puts "#{span.text}: #{span.label}"
end
# => Apple: TECH_COMPANY
# => iPhone: PRODUCT
# => Google: TECH_COMPANY
# => Pixel: PRODUCTOpenAI API Integration
⚠️ This feature requires GPT-5 series models. Please refer to OpenAI's API reference for details.
ℹ️ The
temperatureparameter is sent to the API only when you specify it explicitly. If the model does not support it (e.g., GPT-5 series and o-series models), the request is automatically retried once without it — no per-model configuration is needed.
Easily leverage GPT models within ruby-spacy by using an OpenAI API key. When constructing prompts for the Doc::openai_query method, you can incorporate the following token properties of the document. These properties are retrieved through tool calls (made internally by GPT when necessary) and seamlessly integrated into your prompt. The available properties include:
surfacelemmatag-
pos(part of speech) -
dep(dependency) -
ent_type(entity type) morphology
GPT Prompting (Translation)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("The Beatles released 12 studio albums")
# default parameter values
# max_completion_tokens: 1000
# model: "gpt-5-mini"
res1 = doc.openai_query(
access_token: api_key,
prompt: "Translate the text to Japanese."
)
puts res1Output:
ビートルズは12枚のスタジオアルバムをリリースしました。
GPT Prompting (Elaboration)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960.")
# default parameter values
# max_completion_tokens: 1000
# model: "gpt-5-mini"
res = doc.openai_query(
access_token: api_key,
prompt: "Extract the topic of the document and list 10 entities (names, concepts, locations, etc.) that are relevant to the topic."
)Output:
Topic: The Beatles
Relevant Entities:
- The Beatles (PERSON)
- Liverpool (GPE - Geopolitical Entity)
- English (LANGUAGE)
- Rock (MUSIC GENRE)
- 1960 (DATE)
- Band (MUSIC GROUP)
- John Lennon (PERSON - key member)
- Paul McCartney (PERSON - key member)
- George Harrison (PERSON - key member)
- Ringo Starr (PERSON - key member)
GPT Prompting (JSON Output Using RAG with Token Properties)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("The Beatles released 12 studio albums")
# default parameter values
# max_completion_tokens: 1000
# model: "gpt-5-mini"
res = doc.openai_query(
access_token: api_key,
prompt: "List token data of each of the words used in the sentence. Add 'meaning' property and value (brief semantic definition) to each token data. Output as a JSON object."
)Output:
{
"tokens": [
{
"surface": "The",
"lemma": "the",
"pos": "DET",
"tag": "DT",
"dep": "det",
"ent_type": "",
"morphology": "{'Definite': 'Def', 'PronType': 'Art'}",
"meaning": "A definite article used to specify a noun."
},
{
"surface": "Beatles",
"lemma": "beatle",
"pos": "NOUN",
"tag": "NNS",
"dep": "nsubj",
"ent_type": "GPE",
"morphology": "{'Number': 'Plur'}",
"meaning": "A British rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960."
},
{
"surface": "released",
"lemma": "release",
"pos": "VERB",
"tag": "VBD",
"dep": "ROOT",
"ent_type": "",
"morphology": "{'Tense': 'Past', 'VerbForm': 'Fin'}",
"meaning": "To make something available to the public."
},
{
"surface": "12",
"lemma": "12",
"pos": "NUM",
"tag": "CD",
"dep": "nummod",
"ent_type": "CARDINAL",
"morphology": "{'NumType': 'Card'}",
"meaning": "A cardinal number representing the quantity of twelve."
},
{
"surface": "studio",
"lemma": "studio",
"pos": "NOUN",
"tag": "NN",
"dep": "compound",
"ent_type": "",
"morphology": "{'Number': 'Sing'}",
"meaning": "A place where recording or filming takes place."
},
{
"surface": "albums",
"lemma": "album",
"pos": "NOUN",
"tag": "NNS",
"dep": "dobj",
"ent_type": "",
"morphology": "{'Number': 'Plur'}",
"meaning": "Collections of music tracks or recordings."
}
]
}GPT Prompting (Generate a Syntax Tree using Token Properties)
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("The Beatles released 12 studio albums")
# default parameter values
# max_completion_tokens: 1000
# model: "gpt-5-mini"
res = doc.openai_query(
access_token: api_key,
prompt: "Generate a tree diagram from the text using given token data. Use the following bracketing style: [S [NP [Det the] [N cat]] [VP [V sat] [PP [P on] [NP the mat]]]"
)
puts resOutput:
[S
[NP
[Det The]
[N Beatles]
]
[VP
[V released]
[NP
[Num 12]
[N
[N studio]
[N albums]
]
]
]
]
GPT Text Completion
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Vladimir Nabokov was a")
# default parameter values
# max_completion_tokens: 1000
# model: "gpt-5-mini"
res = doc.openai_completion(access_token: api_key)
puts resOutput:
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, poet, and entomologist, best known for his intricate prose style and innovative narrative techniques. He is most famously recognized for his controversial novel "Lolita," which explores themes of obsession and manipulation. Nabokov's works often reflect his fascination with language, memory, and the nature of art. In addition to his literary accomplishments, he was also a passionate lepidopterist, contributing to the field of butterfly studies. His literary career spanned several decades, and his influence continues to be felt in contemporary literature.
Text Embeddings
Ruby code:
require "ruby-spacy"
api_key = ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist.")
# default model: text-embedding-3-small
res = doc.openai_embeddings(access_token: api_key)
puts resOutput:
-0.0023891362
-0.016671216
0.010879759
0.012918914
0.0012281279
...
Block-based OpenAI API
The Language#with_openai block API provides a streamlined way to combine spaCy's linguistic analysis with OpenAI. The Doc#linguistic_summary method generates a JSON summary of spaCy's analysis (tokens, entities, noun chunks, etc.) that can be passed directly to the LLM as context.
Basic usage:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Apple Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs in California.")
nlp.with_openai(model: "gpt-5-mini") do |ai|
result = ai.chat(
system: "You are a linguistic analyst. Analyze the given linguistic data.",
user: doc.linguistic_summary
)
puts result
endBatch processing with pipe:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
texts = ["The bank approved the loan.", "I sat on the river bank."]
nlp.with_openai(model: "gpt-5-mini") do |ai|
nlp.pipe(texts).each do |doc|
result = ai.chat(
system: "Identify the meaning of 'bank' in one word based on the linguistic context.",
user: doc.linguistic_summary
)
puts "#{doc.text} => #{result}"
end
endCustomizing linguistic summary:
# Include sentences and morphology, exclude noun chunks
summary = doc.linguistic_summary(
sections: [:text, :tokens, :entities, :sentences],
token_attributes: [:text, :lemma, :pos, :dep, :head, :morphology]
)Embeddings:
nlp.with_openai do |ai|
vector = ai.embeddings("Hello world")
puts vector.length # => 1536
endMulti-provider LLM API
The Language#with_llm block API generalizes with_openai to multiple providers. The helper yielded to the block has the same chat interface for every provider.
Anthropic (Claude):
# Requires the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable
# Default model: claude-sonnet-5 (override with model: "...")
nlp.with_llm(provider: :anthropic) do |ai|
result = ai.chat(
system: "You are a linguistic analyst.",
user: doc.linguistic_summary
)
puts result
endLocal models via Ollama (no API key needed):
# Requires a running Ollama server: https://ollama.com
nlp.with_llm(provider: :ollama, model: "llama3.2") do |ai|
puts ai.chat(user: doc.linguistic_summary)
endAny other OpenAI-compatible server (LM Studio, llama.cpp server, vLLM, OpenRouter, etc.) works via base_url::
nlp.with_llm(provider: :openai, base_url: "http://localhost:1234/v1",
access_token: "not-needed", model: "your-model") do |ai|
puts ai.chat(user: "Hello!")
endStructured outputs (schema:): pass a JSON Schema and receive a validated, parsed Ruby Hash — useful for comparing LLM output with spaCy's analysis programmatically. Works with both :openai and :anthropic. Objects in the schema must set additionalProperties: false.
schema = {
type: "object",
properties: {
entities: {
type: "array",
items: {
type: "object",
properties: { text: { type: "string" }, label: { type: "string" } },
required: %w[text label],
additionalProperties: false
}
}
},
required: ["entities"],
additionalProperties: false
}
result = nlp.with_llm(provider: :openai) do |ai|
ai.chat(system: "Extract named entities.", user: doc.text, schema: schema)
end
result["entities"].each { |ent| puts "#{ent["text"]} (#{ent["label"]})" }Note on temperature: for all providers, temperature is omitted from requests unless you pass it explicitly (ai.chat(user: "...", temperature: 0.3)). Models that reject the parameter (e.g., GPT-5 series, o-series, and current Claude models) are automatically retried once without it, so any model works without per-model configuration.
See examples/llm/ for complete scripts, including a spaCy-vs-LLM NER comparison.
Advanced Usage
Thread Safety
All spaCy calls must be made from the same thread that initialized PyCall (normally the main thread). Calling the spaCy pipeline from another thread — e.g. nlp.read(text) inside a Thread.new block, a Rails multi-threaded server, or a Sidekiq worker — will hang the entire process.
Note that attribute access (such as nlp.pipe_names) works from other threads, so the failure mode is not obvious: the process only freezes when the pipeline actually runs. The root cause is currently unknown (it is specific to spaCy pipeline execution; other GIL-releasing Python calls work fine from other threads).
If you need concurrent processing, serialize all Python calls onto a single dedicated thread, for example with a worker thread and a queue.
Setting a Timeout
You can set a timeout for the Spacy::Language.new method:
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm", timeout: 120) # Set timeout to 120 secondsIf the model does not finish loading within the given seconds, a RuntimeError is raised. Pass timeout: nil to wait indefinitely.
Document Serialization
You can serialize processed documents to binary format for caching or storage. This is useful when you want to avoid re-processing the same text multiple times.
Saving a document:
require "ruby-spacy"
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
doc = nlp.read("Apple Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs in California.")
# Serialize to binary
bytes = doc.to_bytes
# Save to file
File.binwrite("doc_cache.bin", bytes)Restoring a document:
nlp = Spacy::Language.new("en_core_web_sm")
# Load from file
bytes = File.binread("doc_cache.bin")
# Restore the document (all annotations are preserved)
restored_doc = Spacy::Doc.from_bytes(nlp, bytes)
puts restored_doc.text
# => "Apple Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs in California."
restored_doc.ents.each do |ent|
puts "#{ent.text} (#{ent.label})"
end
# => Apple Inc. (ORG)
# => Steve Jobs (PERSON)
# => California (GPE)Author
Yoichiro Hasebe [yohasebe@gmail.com]
Acknowlegments
I would like to thank the following open source projects and their creators for making this project possible:
License
This library is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.


