Persistent, reusable multimodal document handles across Responses API calls

API Feedback
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Problem: Multi-stage document reasoning workflows need the model to repeatedly re-inspect the same original multimodal documents. Today this requires retransmitting files each call, increasing bandwidth/latency and risking inconsistencies.

Request: Add a first-class way to upload/register a set of multimodal documents once (server-side) and reference them by stable IDs across multiple Responses API calls, so the model can re-access the original bytes reliably without client retransmission.

Why it matters: Enables reliable multi-step pipelines (extract → verify → reconcile → cite), reduces bandwidth/latency, and improves reproducibility.

Acceptance criteria:

  • Upload once; receive document/set ID(s)

  • Reference ID(s) in subsequent Responses calls (with explicit access scope + TTL/retention controls)

  • Works for images + PDFs/Office docs and mixed sets

  • Deterministic “same content” guarantees (hash/versioning) and clear expiry/errors

2

Thanks for the thoughtful feature request, @jadai008. I can definitely see how being able to upload a multimodal document set once and reference it by stable IDs across Responses API calls would make multi-stage workflows more efficient and reliable.

I've passed this along to our team so it can be logged and considered. While we can't promise if or when this might be implemented, feedback like this with clear use cases and acceptance criteria is very helpful.

Thanks again for sharing!

-Mark G.