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LLM & Agentic

Streaming with Claude

Stream Claude API responses for real-time UX: server-sent events, token-by-token rendering, and production streaming patterns.

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Core5 min readFirst readMessages API

After this section you can

  • Stream tokens over SSE and handle each event type in the sequence
  • Combine streaming with a tool-calling loop
  • Recover from a mid-stream failure, and recognise when not to stream at all
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Streaming with Claude

Stream tokens as they arrive — critical for user-facing applications. Without streaming, users stare at a blank screen for 3–15 seconds. With streaming, they see the first token in <200ms.

Streaming vs. blocking — time-to-first-token is the UX that matters
BLOCKING — wait, then everything blank screen — user waits 3–15s whole answer STREAMING — first token in <200ms, then flow tok tok tok tok tok tok tok tok tok tok server-sent events: message_start → content_block_delta × N → message_stop

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