@web-ai-sdk/detector

Building block for the Web's Built-in Language Detector API. Detect the language of any text on-device, with confidence scores and a sorted list of alternates. Session reuse, pluggable result caching, AbortSignal-driven cleanup.

Docs: https://web-ai-sdk.dev/docs/guides/detector/ · React: useDetector

Status

Language Detector ships stable in Chrome 138+ on desktop. On Edge it is a developer preview starting at Canary/Dev 147+ behind edge://flags/#edge-language-detection-api (per the Edge Language Detector API docs) — not yet in Edge stable. On any other browser this library is a no-op for the React hook (it stays in "unavailable"). The vanilla detect() throws DetectorUnavailableError so callers can branch explicitly.

Install

pnpm add @web-ai-sdk/detector
# or: npm i @web-ai-sdk/detector / bun add @web-ai-sdk/detector

The React adapter ships as a subpath export, with no extra install. react is a peer dependency only when you import the /react entry.

Vanilla TypeScript / DOM

import { detect } from "@web-ai-sdk/detector";

const result = await detect({ text: "Olá, mundo" });
console.log(result.language);   // → "pt"
console.log(result.confidence); // → 0.98
console.log(result.all);        // → full sorted list of candidates

React

import { useDetector } from "@web-ai-sdk/detector/react";

export function LangBadge({ text }: { text: string }) {
  const { status, language, confidence } = useDetector({ text });

  if (status !== "done" || !language) return null;
  return (
    <span>
      {language} · {Math.round(confidence * 100)}%
    </span>
  );
}

State machine: pending | loading | done | unavailable. The hook auto-runs on mount and re-runs whenever text changes. Stays in "pending" while the input is empty or whitespace-only.

API

detect(options): Promise<DetectResult>

interface DetectOptions {
  text: string;
  expectedInputLanguages?: readonly string[];  // bias hint
  minConfidence?: number;                      // default 0
  createOptions?: Partial<LanguageDetectorCreateOptions>;
  cache?: DetectionCache;
  cacheKey?: string;
  signal?: AbortSignal;
}

interface DetectResult {
  language: string | null;          // top BCP-47 code, or null below minConfidence
  confidence: number;               // 0..1 for the top result
  all: DetectionResult[];           // [{ detectedLanguage, confidence }, ...]
  cached: boolean;
}

isDetectorAvailable(): boolean

Feature-detect helper.

checkAvailability(opts?): Promise<LanguageDetectorAvailability | null>

Forwards to LanguageDetector.availability(). Returns null if the global is missing or the call throws.

createSessionStorageCache({ storage?, prefix? }): DetectionCache

Optional cache backend. Pass it to detect({ cache }) to enable result caching, with an optional custom storage (e.g. localStorage, an in-memory polyfill).

Lower-level helpers (advanced)

getLanguageDetectorApi, getOrCreateLanguageDetector, defaultCacheKey; exported so you can compose your own pipeline (e.g. share a session across multiple call sites, or roll your own retry).

Caching

Two layers, same as the other packages:

• Session cache (internal, in-memory, always on): a Map<stringifiedOptions, LanguageDetector> so consecutive calls with the same expectedInputLanguages shape reuse the warm session. Cold-start is fast on this model (~100-300ms) but warm is still sub-50ms.
• Result cache (opt-in): pass a cache (anything matching { get, set }) to memoize the full sorted list by trimmed text. Omit it for a fresh model call every time.

// Off by default; every call hits the model.
detect({ text: "hello" });

// Opt in for sessionStorage-backed caching.
detect({ text: "hello", cache: createSessionStorageCache() });

Composing with the other packages

Pair detector with summarizer / translator / prompt to skip the manual language: "en" argument when you don't know the input language ahead of time:

import { detect } from "@web-ai-sdk/detector";
import { summarize } from "@web-ai-sdk/summarizer";

const { language } = await detect({ text: articleText });
await summarize({ language: language ?? "en", text: articleText });

A first-class language: "auto" shortcut may land in a future release.

Errors and unavailability

The vanilla detect() throws DetectorUnavailableError when the API is missing or reports availability: "unavailable". The React hook absorbs this and returns status: "unavailable" instead.

AbortSignal is supported on both surfaces. The result cache is not written for aborted runs.

License

MIT © Beto Muniz