Cohere Performance Tuning

Overview

Optimize Cohere API v2 performance through model selection, embedding batches, rerank pipelines, caching, and streaming for time-to-first-token.

Prerequisites

• cohere-ai SDK installed
• Understanding of Cohere endpoints (Chat, Embed, Rerank)
• Redis or in-memory cache (optional)

Latency Benchmarks (Typical)

Operation	Model	P50	P95
Chat (short)	command-r7b-12-2024	500ms	1.5s
Chat (short)	command-a-03-2025	800ms	2.5s
Chat (stream TTFT)	command-a-03-2025	200ms	600ms
Embed (96 texts)	embed-v4.0	150ms	400ms
Rerank (100 docs)	rerank-v3.5	100ms	300ms
Classify (96 inputs)	embed-english-v3.0	200ms	500ms

Instructions

Strategy 1: Model Selection by Latency Budget

// Use smaller models for latency-sensitive paths
function selectModel(latencyBudgetMs: number): string {
  if (latencyBudgetMs < 1000) return 'command-r7b-12-2024';   // 7B, fastest
  if (latencyBudgetMs < 3000) return 'command-r-08-2024';      // Mid-tier
  return 'command-a-03-2025';                                    // Best quality
}

// Pair with maxTokens to control output length
await cohere.chat({
  model: selectModel(1500),
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: query }],
  maxTokens: 200,  // Shorter output = lower latency
});

Strategy 2: Streaming for Time-to-First-Token

// Non-streaming: user waits for entire response (800ms-5s)
// Streaming: first token arrives in ~200ms

async function streamForUI(message: string): Promise<string> {
  const stream = await cohere.chatStream({
    model: 'command-a-03-2025',
    messages: [{ role: 'user', content: message }],
  });

  let fullText = '';
  for await (const event of stream) {
    if (event.type === 'content-delta') {
      const text = event.delta?.message?.content?.text ?? '';
      fullText += text;
      // Emit to frontend immediately — perceived latency drops to ~200ms
    }
  }
  return fullText;
}

Strategy 3: Batch Embeddings (96 per Call)

// BAD: 1000 texts = 1000 API calls
for (const text of texts) {
  await cohere.embed({ model: 'embed-v4.0', texts: [text], ... });
}

// GOOD: 1000 texts = 11 API calls (96 per batch)
async function batchEmbed(texts: string[]): Promise<number[][]> {
  const BATCH = 96; // Cohere max per request
  const results: number[][] = [];

  const batches = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < texts.length; i += BATCH) {
    batches.push(texts.slice(i, i + BATCH));
  }

  // Parallel batches (respect rate limits)
  const responses = await Promise.all(
    batches.map(batch =>
      cohere.embed({
        model: 'embed-v4.0',
        texts: batch,
        inputType: 'search_document',
        embeddingTypes: ['float'],
      })
    )
  );

  for (const resp of responses) {
    results.push(...resp.embeddings.float);
  }
  return results;
}

Strategy 4: Compressed Embeddings

// float: 1024 dims * 4 bytes = 4KB per vector
// int8:  1024 dims * 1 byte  = 1KB per vector (75% smaller)
// binary: 1024 dims / 8      = 128 bytes per vector (97% smaller)

const response = await cohere.embed({
  model: 'embed-v4.0',
  texts: documents,
  inputType: 'search_document',
  embeddingTypes: ['int8'],   // or ['binary'] for maximum compression
});

// Use int8 for storage, float for final scoring
const storageVectors = response.embeddings.int8;   // Store these

Strategy 5: Rerank as a Pre-filter

// Instead of embedding everything, use rerank as a fast pre-filter
async function efficientSearch(query: string, corpus: string[]) {
  // Step 1: Rerank finds top candidates in ~100ms (up to 1000 docs)
  const reranked = await cohere.rerank({
    model: 'rerank-v3.5',
    query,
    documents: corpus,
    topN: 5,
  });

  // Step 2: Only embed the top 5 for fine-grained scoring (optional)
  const topDocs = reranked.results.map(r => ({
    text: corpus[r.index],
    score: r.relevanceScore,
  }));

  return topDocs;
}

Strategy 6: Embedding Cache

import { LRUCache } from 'lru-cache';
import crypto from 'crypto';

const embedCache = new LRUCache<string, number[]>({
  max: 10_000,
  ttl: 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000, // 24h — embeddings are deterministic
});

function hashText(text: string): string {
  return crypto.createHash('sha256').update(text).digest('hex').slice(0, 16);
}

async function cachedEmbed(texts: string[]): Promise<number[][]> {
  const results: number[][] = new Array(texts.length);
  const uncached: { index: number; text: string }[] = [];

  // Check cache first
  for (let i = 0; i < texts.length; i++) {
    const key = hashText(texts[i]);
    const cached = embedCache.get(key);
    if (cached) {
      results[i] = cached;
    } else {
      uncached.push({ index: i, text: texts[i] });
    }
  }

  // Embed only uncached texts
  if (uncached.length > 0) {
    const vectors = await batchEmbed(uncached.map(u => u.text));
    for (let j = 0; j < uncached.length; j++) {
      results[uncached[j].index] = vectors[j];
      embedCache.set(hashText(uncached[j].text), vectors[j]);
    }
  }

  return results;
}

Strategy 7: Response Caching for Chat

import { LRUCache } from 'lru-cache';

// Cache chat responses for deterministic queries
const chatCache = new LRUCache<string, string>({
  max: 1000,
  ttl: 5 * 60 * 1000, // 5 min TTL — chat responses can vary
});

async function cachedChat(message: string, system?: string): Promise<string> {
  const key = `${system ?? ''}:${message}`;
  const cached = chatCache.get(key);
  if (cached) return cached;

  const response = await cohere.chat({
    model: 'command-a-03-2025',
    messages: [
      ...(system ? [{ role: 'system' as const, content: system }] : []),
      { role: 'user' as const, content: message },
    ],
    temperature: 0, // Deterministic for caching
  });

  const text = response.message?.content?.[0]?.text ?? '';
  chatCache.set(key, text);
  return text;
}

Performance Monitoring

async function timedCohereCall<T>(
  endpoint: string,
  fn: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  const start = performance.now();
  try {
    const result = await fn();
    const ms = performance.now() - start;
    console.log(`[cohere] ${endpoint}: ${ms.toFixed(0)}ms`);
    return result;
  } catch (err) {
    const ms = performance.now() - start;
    console.error(`[cohere] ${endpoint} FAILED: ${ms.toFixed(0)}ms`, err);
    throw err;
  }
}

Output

• Model selection by latency budget
• Streaming for sub-200ms TTFT
• Batch embedding (96x fewer API calls)
• Compressed embeddings (75-97% storage savings)
• Cache layer for deterministic queries
• Rerank as fast pre-filter

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Chat > 5s	Long output + slow model	Use streaming, reduce maxTokens
Embed timeout	Too many texts	Batch to 96 per call
Cache stale	Long TTL	Reduce TTL for volatile data
High costs	No caching	Cache embeddings (deterministic)

Resources

• Cohere Models & Context
• Embed Best Practices
• Rerank Best Practices

Next Steps

For cost optimization, see cohere-cost-tuning.