Implementation:Cohere ai Cohere python Content Union

Knowledge Sources	Cohere Python SDK
Domains	SDK, Chat, Multimodal
Last Updated	2026-02-15 14:00 GMT

Overview

Content is a discriminated union type representing a content block within a chat message, resolved to either text or image content.

Description

The Content union is composed of two concrete content block classes, each corresponding to a content type:

• TextContent -- A text content block containing a type literal "text" and a text string field with the actual text content.
• ImageUrlContent -- An image content block containing a type literal "image_url" and an image_url field of type ImageUrl that holds the image URL reference.

The union is discriminated on the type field, meaning the value of type determines which variant is deserialized. This enables multimodal chat messages that can contain both text and image content blocks.

Usage

Use Content when constructing message content for the Cohere V2 chat API that supports multimodal inputs. Content blocks allow you to mix text and images within a single message, enabling vision-capable models to process both text and visual information.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: Cohere Python SDK
• File: src/cohere/types/content.py

Signature

class TextContent(UncheckedBaseModel):
    type: typing.Literal["text"] = "text"
    text: str

class ImageUrlContent(UncheckedBaseModel):
    type: typing.Literal["image_url"] = "image_url"
    image_url: ImageUrl

Content = typing_extensions.Annotated[
    typing.Union[TextContent, ImageUrlContent],
    UnionMetadata(discriminant="type"),
]

Import

from cohere.types import Content
from cohere.types.content import TextContent, ImageUrlContent

I/O Contract

TextContent Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
type	Literal["text"]	Yes (default: "text")	Type discriminator, always "text".
text	str	Yes	The text content of this block.

ImageUrlContent Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
type	Literal["image_url"]	Yes (default: "image_url")	Type discriminator, always "image_url".
image_url	ImageUrl	Yes	The image URL reference for this content block.

Usage Examples

from cohere.types.content import TextContent, ImageUrlContent

# Create a text content block
text_block = TextContent(text="Describe the image below.")

# Create an image content block
image_block = ImageUrlContent(
    image_url={"url": "https://example.com/photo.jpg"}
)

# Use mixed content in a multimodal chat message
response = client.chat(
    model="command-a-03-2025",
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": [
                {"type": "text", "text": "What do you see in this image?"},
                {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": "https://example.com/photo.jpg"}},
            ],
        }
    ],
)

Related Pages

• Environment:Cohere_ai_Cohere_python_Python_SDK_Runtime