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Type: partition Subtype: vlm For more information about how the various partitioning strategies balance output quality, speed, and cost, see Partitioning.

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Usage guidance

Use this strategy when documents are consistently image-heavy, scanned, or visually complex and every page should be processed by a vision language model for maximum fidelity. Unlike the Auto strategy, VLM routes every page directly to the vision language model without per-page evaluation.

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Settings

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provider
string
VLM provider to use. Allowed values: anthropic, auto, bedrock, openai, vertexai. Default: anthropic.
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provider_api_key
string
If specified, overrides the default API key used for VLM provider calls. Default: none (uses Unstructured’s internal default).
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model
string
VLM model to use. Default: claude-sonnet-4-20250514.For a full list of the models available in Unstructured, see Available models.
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output_format
string
Format of the partitioner response. Allowed values: text/html, application/json. Default: text/html.
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format_html
boolean
If true, applies Beautiful Soup’s prettify method to the HTML generated by the VLM partitioner, adding indentation for readability. Default: true.
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unique_element_ids
boolean
If true, assigns UUIDs to element IDs, guaranteeing uniqueness (useful when used as database primary keys). If false, assigns a SHA-256 hash of the element’s text as its ID. Default: true.
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is_dynamic
boolean
required
Must be false to use the VLM strategy.
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allow_fast
boolean
If true, allows pages to be routed to Fast partitioning as needed for better performance and cost savings. Default: true.
vlm_partitioner_workflow_node = WorkflowNode(
    name="Partitioner",
    subtype="vlm",
    type="partition",
    settings={
        "provider": "<provider>",
        "provider_api_key": None,
        "model": "<model>",
        "output_format": "<output-format>",
        "format_html": <True|False>,
        "unique_element_ids": <True|False>,
        "is_dynamic": False,
        "allow_fast": <True|False>
    }
)

{
    "name": "Partitioner",
    "type": "partition",
    "subtype": "vlm",
    "settings": {
        "provider": "<provider>",
        "provider_api_key": null,
        "model": "<model>",
        "output_format": "<output-format>",
        "format_html": <true|false>,
        "unique_element_ids": <true|false>,
        "is_dynamic": false,
        "allow_fast": <true|false>
    }
}