Translation

neokapi exposes translation through a single translate tool. One --provider flag selects the backend, and the command, flags, and credential model are the same whichever backend you choose:

• LLM providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, Ollama. Context-aware, full prompt control, and (with Ollama) fully on-device.
• The offline demo provider — keyless, deterministic, clearly-marked illustrative output for trying flows without credentials.
• Plugin-hosted MT engines — classic machine-translation engines (DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and the like) are not built in; a plugin can register one and it appears under the same --provider flag.

The generated Tool reference lists the current parameters and default model for each provider.

Configuring a provider is a task, not a concept

Selecting a model, supplying credentials, and setting a default are walked step by step in the recipe Choose a translation model — including on-device translation with Ollama. This page covers what translation is and how it composes.

A single tool

Because every backend is a value of --provider on the same translate command, switching between them is a configuration change only. Replace provider: anthropic with provider: ollama and the rest of a flow is unchanged. The API key is never read from the recipe; credentials are supplied out-of-band (see the recipe).

Related AI tools

Translation composes with other LLM-backed tools in the same flow:

Tool	Purpose
translate	Translate untranslated blocks with the selected provider
qa	LLM-judged quality check (fluency, accuracy, terminology)
review	Detailed translation review with explanations
term-extract	Extract candidate terminology from source blocks

The qa tool runs deterministic rule-based checks without --provider, and switches to LLM-judged review when a provider is given. See QA checks for the full check catalogue.

Composing in flows

The translate tool composes into flows like any other stage. A production flow typically chains memory leverage, a translate pass, and a review step:

steps:
  - tool: recycle
  - tool: translate
    config:
      provider: anthropic
  - tool: review
  - tool: qa

Switching providers — anthropic to ollama, or vice versa — is a configuration change; the surrounding steps are unchanged.

Prompts

Every prompt kapi sends is built in core/ai/prompt/, composed from framework rules (return only the translation; preserve placeholders and inline tags) plus the steering your project declares — an instruction, a brand voice profile, and a terms store. The prompt is the same for every provider; only the transport differs.

You do not have to take that on trust: --explain-prompts prints the exact text sent to the model, attributed section by section. See Prompts.

Memory matches are not part of the prompt — recycling is a separate deterministic step that runs before translation.