LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM-powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third-party integrations to simplify AI application development – all while future-proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves.
```bash
pip install langchain
```
If you're looking for more advanced customization or agent orchestration, check out [LangGraph](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/langgraph/overview), our framework for building controllable agent workflows.
---
**Documentation**:
- [docs.langchain.com](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/langchain/overview) – Comprehensive documentation, including conceptual overviews and guides
- [reference.langchain.com/python](https://reference.langchain.com/python) – API reference docs for LangChain packages
**Discussions**: Visit the [LangChain Forum](https://forum.langchain.com) to connect with the community and share all of your technical questions, ideas, and feedback.
> [!NOTE]
> Looking for the JS/TS library? Check out [LangChain.js](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchainjs).
## Why use LangChain?
LangChain helps developers build applications powered by LLMs through a standard interface for models, embeddings, vector stores, and more.
Use LangChain for:
- **Real-time data augmentation**. Easily connect LLMs to diverse data sources and external/internal systems, drawing from LangChain's vast library of integrations with model providers, tools, vector stores, retrievers, and more.
- **Model interoperability**. Swap models in and out as your engineering team experiments to find the best choice for your application's needs. As the industry frontier evolves, adapt quickly – LangChain's abstractions keep you moving without losing momentum.
- **Rapid prototyping**. Quickly build and iterate on LLM applications with LangChain's modular, component-based architecture. Test different approaches and workflows without rebuilding from scratch, accelerating your development cycle.
- **Production-ready features**. Deploy reliable applications with built-in support for monitoring, evaluation, and debugging through integrations like LangSmith. Scale with confidence using battle-tested patterns and best practices.
- **Vibrant community and ecosystem**. Leverage a rich ecosystem of integrations, templates, and community-contributed components. Benefit from continuous improvements and stay up-to-date with the latest AI developments through an active open-source community.
- **Flexible abstraction layers**. Work at the level of abstraction that suits your needs - from high-level chains for quick starts to low-level components for fine-grained control. LangChain grows with your application's complexity.
## LangChain ecosystem
While the LangChain framework can be used standalone, it also integrates seamlessly with any LangChain product, giving developers a full suite of tools when building LLM applications.
To improve your LLM application development, pair LangChain with:
- [LangGraph](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/langgraph/overview) – Build agents that can reliably handle complex tasks with LangGraph, our low-level agent orchestration framework. LangGraph offers customizable architecture, long-term memory, and human-in-the-loop workflows – and is trusted in production by companies like LinkedIn, Uber, Klarna, and GitLab.
- [Integrations](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/integrations/providers/overview) – List of LangChain integrations, including chat & embedding models, tools & toolkits, and more
- [LangSmith](https://www.langchain.com/langsmith) – Helpful for agent evals and observability. Debug poor-performing LLM app runs, evaluate agent trajectories, gain visibility in production, and improve performance over time.
- [LangSmith Deployment](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/deployments) – Deploy and scale agents effortlessly with a purpose-built deployment platform for long-running, stateful workflows. Discover, reuse, configure, and share agents across teams – and iterate quickly with visual prototyping in [LangSmith Studio](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/studio).
- [Deep Agents](https://github.com/langchain-ai/deepagents) *(new!)* – Build agents that can plan, use subagents, and leverage file systems for complex tasks
## Additional resources
- [API Reference](https://reference.langchain.com/python) – Detailed reference on navigating base packages and integrations for LangChain.
- [Contributing Guide](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/contributing/overview) – Learn how to contribute to LangChain projects and find good first issues.
- [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/blob/master/.github/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) – Our community guidelines and standards for participation.
