Sunflower Chat

Sunflower is Sunbird AI’s family of large language models, fine-tuned for African languages and cultural context. It provides conversational AI through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint: POST /tasks/chat/completions. Because the request and response formats mirror the OpenAI Chat Completions API, you can move between the OpenAI API and the Sunbird API by changing only the base URL and API key.

Choosing a Model

Select a model with the model field. Two models are available:

`model`	Coverage	Best for
`sunflower-9b` (default)	67 African languages plus English (good / moderate / basic tiers)	Broad pan-African translation, instruction-following, and multi-turn chat
`sunflower-14b`	English + 31 Ugandan / regional languages (32 total)	High-accuracy translation, factual Q&A, summarization, and explanation across Ugandan languages

sunflower-9b is the default when model is omitted — pass "model": "sunflower-14b" to keep using the 14B model. The old identifier Sunbird/Sunflower-14B is no longer accepted — sending it returns a 400 error asking you to use sunflower-14b instead.

sunflower-9b — supported languages (67 African languages, grouped by the model’s understanding tier):

Good: Afrikaans, Zulu, Nigerian Pidgin, Chichewa, Swahili, Xhosa, Somali, Lingala, Sotho, Igbo, Malagasy, Kinyarwanda, Hausa, Tswana, Yoruba, Luganda, Shona, Ndebele, Amharic, Kirundi, Runyoro, Luo, Ewe, Runyankole.
Moderate: Kikuyu, Lusoga, Acholi, Rukiga, Rutooro, Oromo, Bemba, Ruruuli, Akan, Lango, Lugwere, Lugbara, Kumam, Lugungu, Lumasaba, Ateso, Lunyole.
Basic: Kabyle, Rukonjo, Bambara, Lubwisi, Wolof, Samia, Jopadhola, Alur, Bari, Kakwa, Dagbani, Karamojong, Berber, Fulani, Kwamba, Ma’di, Aringa, Luhya, Kalenjin, Kupsabiny, Lendu, Dagaare, Ik, Pokot, Kanuri, Dinka.

sunflower-14b — supported languages (English + 31 Ugandan/regional): Acholi (ach), Alur (alz), Aringa (luc), Ateso (teo), Bari (bfa), English (eng), Jopadhola (adh), Kakwa (keo), Karamojong (kdj), Kinyarwanda (kin), Kumam (kdi), Kupsabiny (kpz), Kwamba (rwm), Lango (laj), Lubwisi (tlj), Lugbara (lgg), Lugungu (rub), Lugwere (gwr), Luganda (lug), Lumasaba (myx), Lunyole (nuj), Ma’di (mhi), Pokot (pok), Rukiga (cgg), Rukonjo (koo), Runyankole (nyn), Runyoro (nyo), Ruruuli (ruc), Rutooro (ttj), Samia (lsm), Swahili (swa), Lusoga (xog).

Per-language quality scales with the amount of training data available for each language. Full evaluations and language codes are on the model pages: sunflower-14b and sunflower-qwen3.5-9b.

Chat Completion

Example Request

import requests

url = "https://api.sunbird.ai/tasks/chat/completions"

headers = {
    "accept": "application/json",
    "Authorization": "Bearer <your-access-token>",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
}

payload = {
    "model": "sunflower-14b",
    "messages": [
        {"role": "user", "content": "Good morning, what is the weather today?"}
    ],
    "temperature": 0.3,
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload)
print(response.status_code)
print(response.json())

const response = await fetch('https://api.sunbird.ai/tasks/chat/completions', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Authorization': 'Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN>',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    model: 'sunflower-14b',
    messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Good morning, what is the weather today?' }],
    temperature: 0.3
  })
});
console.log(await response.json());

Response

{
  "id": "chatcmpl-8f14e45fceea167a5a36dedd4bea2543",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "created": 1718000000,
  "model": "sunflower-14b",
  "choices": [
    {
      "index": 0,
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "I'm glad you're up! While I can't provide real-time weather updates, I can help you understand weather forecasts or explain common weather patterns in Uganda."
      },
      "finish_reason": "stop"
    }
  ],
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 22,
    "completion_tokens": 47,
    "total_tokens": 69
  }
}

Using the OpenAI SDK

Because the endpoint is OpenAI-compatible, the official OpenAI Python SDK works out of the box — just point base_url at https://api.sunbird.ai/tasks:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="<your-access-token>",
    base_url="https://api.sunbird.ai/tasks",
)

completion = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="sunflower-14b",
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": "translate from english to luganda: i am very hungry they should serve food in time",
        }
    ],
    temperature=0.1,
)

print(completion.choices[0].message.content)
# Ndi muyala nnyo, emmere erina okugabibwa mu budde.

Multi-turn Conversations

Maintain context by sending the running message history. Each message has a role and content:

system: Sets the behavior and persona of the AI. When omitted, each model applies its own default Sunflower system message.
user: The input from the human user.
assistant: A previous response from the AI (used for history).

payload = {
    "model": "sunflower-14b",
    "messages": [
        {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful multilingual assistant."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "Translate 'hello' to Luganda."},
        {"role": "assistant", "content": "'Hello' is 'Gyebaleko'."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "And to Acholi?"},
    ],
}

Streaming

Set "stream": true to receive Server-Sent Events in OpenAI chat.completion.chunk format, terminated by data: [DONE]. With the OpenAI SDK:

stream = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="sunflower-14b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Tell me about Uganda."}],
    stream=True,
)

for chunk in stream:
    if chunk.choices and chunk.choices[0].delta.content:
        print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content, end="", flush=True)

Supported Parameters

Parameter	Description
`model`	`sunflower-9b` (default) or `sunflower-14b`. The old `Sunbird/Sunflower-14B` identifier is no longer accepted.
`messages`	The conversation history.
`temperature`	0.0–2.0, default 0.3.
`max_tokens`	Maximum tokens to generate.
`top_p`	Nucleus sampling.
`stop`	Stop sequence(s).
`stream`	Stream the response as SSE when `true`.

Getting Started

Guides

Support

Choosing a Model

Chat Completion

Example Request

Response

Using the OpenAI SDK

Multi-turn Conversations

Streaming

Supported Parameters

​Choosing a Model

​Chat Completion

​Example Request

​Response

​Using the OpenAI SDK

​Multi-turn Conversations

​Streaming

​Supported Parameters

Choosing a Model

Chat Completion

Example Request

Response

Using the OpenAI SDK

Multi-turn Conversations

Streaming

Supported Parameters