AI SDK - Alibaba Provider

The Alibaba provider for the AI SDK contains language model support for Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, including the Qwen model series with advanced reasoning capabilities.

Setup

The Alibaba provider is available in the @ai-sdk/alibaba module. You can install it with

npm i @ai-sdk/alibaba

Skill for Coding Agents

If you use coding agents such as Claude Code or Cursor, we highly recommend adding the AI SDK skill to your repository:

npx skills add vercel/ai

Provider Instance

You can import the default provider instance alibaba from @ai-sdk/alibaba:

import { alibaba } from '@ai-sdk/alibaba';

Language Model Example

import { alibaba } from '@ai-sdk/alibaba';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: alibaba('qwen-plus'),
  prompt: 'Write a vegetarian lasagna recipe for 4 people.',
});

Thinking Mode Example (Qwen Reasoning Models)

Alibaba's Qwen models support thinking/reasoning mode for complex problem-solving:

import { alibaba } from '@ai-sdk/alibaba';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text, reasoningText } = await generateText({
  model: alibaba('qwen3-max'),
  providerOptions: {
    alibaba: {
      enableThinking: true,
      thinkingBudget: 2048,
    },
  },
  prompt: 'How many "r"s are in the word "strawberry"?',
});

console.log('Reasoning:', reasoningText);
console.log('Answer:', text);

Tool Calling Example

import { alibaba } from '@ai-sdk/alibaba';
import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';

const { text } = await generateText({
  model: alibaba('qwen-plus'),
  tools: {
    weather: tool({
      description: 'Get the weather in a location',
      parameters: z.object({
        location: z.string().describe('The location to get the weather for'),
      }),
      execute: async ({ location }) => ({
        location,
        temperature: 72 + Math.floor(Math.random() * 21) - 10,
      }),
    }),
  },
  prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
});

Explicit Caching Example

Alibaba supports both implicit and explicit prompt caching to reduce costs for repeated prompts.

Implicit caching works automatically - the provider caches appropriate content without any configuration. For more control, you can use explicit caching by marking specific messages with cacheControl:

import { alibaba } from '@ai-sdk/alibaba';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const { text, usage } = await generateText({
  model: alibaba('qwen-plus'),
  messages: [
    {
      role: 'system',
      content: 'You are a helpful assistant. [... long system prompt ...]',
      providerMetadata: {
        alibaba: {
          cacheControl: { type: 'ephemeral' },
        },
      },
    },
    {
      role: 'user',
      content: 'What is the capital of France?',
    },
  ],
});

Documentation

Please check out the Alibaba provider documentation for more information.