How can I list or bulk-delete all threads using the assistants API for housekeeping?

Below is some detailed context regarding the current state of the API:

Current Capabilities

• The API provides endpoints to create, retrieve, modify, and delete individual threads.
• There is no built-in endpoint to list all threads or delete all threads at once.

Implications for Housekeeping

• Idle Threads: When you create threads—even if they are not actively used—they remain attached to the assistant. This means that over time, you could accumulate many idle threads.
• Resource Impact: Generally, idle threads do not have a significant impact on performance. However, if your application creates threads very frequently, you may want to manage these threads on your side.
• Programmatic Cleanup: Since there is no API endpoint to list or bulk-delete threads, you need to keep track of the thread IDs when you create them. If cleanup or housekeeping is important to your use case, consider maintaining a local record (e.g., a database or in-memory store) of these IDs so that you can call the delete endpoint for each thread when needed.

Example: Tracking and Deleting Threads

You might want to implement a mechanism similar to this:

PYTHONCopied
import requests

# Example values
API_KEY = "YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY"
HEADERS = {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}",
    "OpenAI-Beta": "assistants=v2"
}

# Suppose you store your thread IDs in a list
thread_ids = ["thread_abc123", "thread_xyz789"]

# Deleting each thread iteratively
for thread_id in thread_ids:
    response = requests.delete(f"https://api.openai.com/v1/threads/{thread_id}", headers=HEADERS)
    if response.status_code == 200:
        print(f"Successfully deleted thread {thread_id}")
    else:
        print(f"Failed to delete thread {thread_id}: {response.text}")

Conclusion

While the current API design doesn't provide an endpoint to list or bulk-delete threads, this usually isn't a problem unless you expect to manage a very high volume of threads. In such cases, you'll need to design your system to track thread IDs for eventual deletion if cleanup becomes necessary.