Explicitly define the type of the output

[dakl]

Problem Statement

I think a good addition to the toon format would be to explicitly define the type of the output. For example, when working with output from LLMm it's useful to deserialize the output into a specific type, for example having structured defined using pydantic models.

Perhaps there is already a way to do this, but I couldn't find it. Lemme know if you think this is a good idea.

Proposed Solution

If given

context:
  task: Our favorite hikes together
  location: Boulder
  season: spring_2025
friends[3]: ana,luis,sam
hikes[3]{id,name,distanceKm,elevationGain,companion,wasSunny}:
  1,Blue Lake Trail,7.5,320,ana,true
  2,Ridge Overlook,9.2,540,luis,false
  3,Wildflower Loop,5.1,180,sam,true

it's not obvious what the type of the output is. We could augment the toon format with a type field, like this:

type: HikePlan[9]
context:
  task: Our favorite hikes together
  location: Boulder
  season: spring_2025
friends[3]: ana,luis,sam
hikes[3]{id,name,distanceKm,elevationGain,companion,wasSunny}:
  1,Blue Lake Trail,7.5,320,ana,true
  2,Ridge Overlook,9.2,540,luis,false
  3,Wildflower Loop,5.1,180,sam,true

This could be returned as the first line of the toon output, so that we can immediately see the type of the output and the number of lines of data we should read to deserialize the output into a specific type.

Alternatives Considered

No response

SPEC Compliance

No response

Additional Context

No response