---
id: unitycatalog-openai
version: "0.4.0"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# unitycatalog-openai — Support for Unity Catalog functions as OpenAI tools

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 1.5M/mo

## What it is and what it does

This package bridges Unity Catalog functions and OpenAI's function-calling API, allowing you to register UC functions as tools that OpenAI models can invoke during agent conversations. It wraps the unitycatalog-ai client and pydantic for schema validation, handling the translation between UC function definitions and OpenAI's tool format.

You define or reference UC functions (either in a self-hosted Unity Catalog server or Databricks-managed UC), wrap them in a UCFunctionToolkit, and pass the resulting tool definitions to OpenAI's chat completion API. When the model decides to call a tool, you execute it against your UC client and feed the result back into the conversation loop. The package includes utilities for handling tool responses and managing different client configurations.

Use it for:

- Build AI agents that query or transform data stored in Databricks Unity Catalog by having OpenAI models invoke UC functions.
- Enable customer support chatbots to execute business logic functions (e.g., data lookups, calculations) stored in UC without hardcoding integrations.
- Create agentic workflows where OpenAI decides which UC functions to call based on user input, then chains results across multiple function calls.
- Integrate Databricks-managed UC functions into OpenAI-powered applications without writing custom API layers.
- Prototype multi-step data pipelines where an LLM orchestrates UC function calls to process and analyze data.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Exposes Unity Catalog functions as tools for OpenAI models, enabling agents to call UC functions through OpenAI's function-calling interface.

Yes, if you are building OpenAI agents that need to invoke Unity Catalog functions. The package is actively maintained, has low install friction, and cleanly abstracts the function-calling protocol. Install it only if you have access to a Unity Catalog instance (self-hosted or Databricks) and are already using OpenAI's API.

## Install

pip install unitycatalog-openai
uv add unitycatalog-openai
poetry add unitycatalog-openai

## Installing unitycatalog-openai

Before you install: Low install friction with three straightforward runtime dependencies. Actively maintained as of the latest release.

License in practice: Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart:

pip install unitycatalog-openai

from unitycatalog.ai.openai.toolkit import UCFunctionToolkit

toolkit = UCFunctionToolkit(function_names=["catalog.schema.function_name"])
tools = toolkit.tools

# Pass tools to OpenAI API
import openai
response = openai.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "query"}],
    tools=tools
)

Requires Python >=3.10 and an active Unity Catalog server or Databricks workspace with appropriate authentication.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports async function execution or only synchronous calls
- Performance characteristics when working with large numbers of UC functions
- Compatibility with OpenAI models beyond gpt-4o-mini

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 1.5M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

unity catalog openai integration, openai function calling tools, databricks unity catalog agents, uc functions as openai tools, agentic function calling, databricks function toolkit, openai tool integration, agent-framework, databricks-integration, function-calling

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