Streamed responses with web search corrupted by citations

kristoph · July 11, 2025, 11:25pm

There was a recent update to the responses API which is causing any streamed response. which includes web search call citations, to be corrupted with what look like citation markers. Because these are look like failed substitutions there is not even any way to remove them without also removing a chunk of the response.

This is super bad bug with very obvious visual artifacts so I very much hope it will be addressed soon.

There is a gist here …

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/kristoph/b8aab2fe0cbfbc67ceba5340ffde62d9

open ai bug

This is a sequence of message from the responses API that shows the various unusual characters. 

{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2042,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":" ","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2043,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":" ","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2044,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"cite","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2045,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2046,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"turn","logprobs":[]}
turn{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2047,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"2","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2048,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"search","logprobs":[]}
{"type":"response.output_text.delta","sequence_number":2049,"item_id":"msg_686ef6a697e881929dd50a7db918b1c7022954e2f310e68b","output_index":31,"content_index":0,"delta":"0","logprobs":[]}

This file has been truncated. show original

The offending payload looks includes these sequences:

Topic		Replies	Views
Web search on Responses API breaks inline citations when passed a pydantic data model as text_format Bugs structured-output , web-search , responses-api	1	48	July 11, 2025
O3-mini file_search in Assistants API - gibberish? API	4	210	July 14, 2025
Structured output with responses API returns tons of \n\n\n\n Bugs responses-endpoint , gpt-41	11	258	July 14, 2025
Web Search Citations Not Appearing in API Response API	2	681	April 13, 2025
WebSearch Doesn't Work in API - Hardly works in Playground Bugs api	3	189	May 5, 2025

Streamed responses with web search corrupted by citations

Related topics