AI SDK ai@7.0.172: extract and decide need experimental_download for remote file URLs (November 13, 2026)

What changed

ai@7.0.172 was published on GitHub on November 13, 2026 at 05:57 UTC. It changes how experimental_extract and experimental_decide handle remote file URLs in state.

Before, the SDK downloaded those files through the global fetch. Now you must pass an explicit experimental_download hook. Without it, a remote file URL is rejected with DownloadError.

Inline file data still works without the hook: bytes, base64 content and data URLs.

experimental_extract itself is new. It was added one release earlier, in ai@7.0.171 (November 12, 2026).

The release also updates @ai-sdk/provider-utils to 5.0.81 and @ai-sdk/gateway to 4.0.145.

What to do

• If you call experimental_extract or experimental_decide with file URLs, add experimental_download before you upgrade, or the calls will fail.
• The hook takes the function returned by createDownload({ fetch }).
• For URLs you do not control (user input, links picked by a model), give createDownload a transport that checks DNS, such as createGuardedFetch() on Node.js. Install it with npm install guarded-fetch@^0.3.0. It needs Node.js 20.19 or later.
• createDownload() with no custom fetch uses the global fetch and gives no DNS protection.
• The model's own fetch option does not cover these downloads, so a guarded fetch on the provider is not enough.
• Do not replace globalThis.fetch with the guarded transport. Close the guarded fetch with close() at shutdown.
• If you only send inline files, nothing changes.

The docs show the hook with generateText. The same experimental_download option is passed to experimental_extract and experimental_decide:

import { createOpenAI } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { createGuardedFetch } from 'guarded-fetch';
import { createDownload, generateText } from 'ai';

const fetch = createGuardedFetch();
const openai = createOpenAI({ fetch });
const download = createDownload({ fetch, maxBytes: 20 * 1024 * 1024 });

try {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: openai('gpt-4.1'),
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          {
            type: 'file',
            data: new URL('https://example.com/report.pdf'),
            mediaType: 'application/pdf',
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
    experimental_download: download,
  });
  console.log(result.text);
} finally {
  await fetch.close();
}