Answer block
One typed unit of a normalized AI answer, a paragraph, heading, list, code block or quote. Answers arrive as prose from the surface, but block structure exists so a downstream pipeline can work at the level of a specific paragraph or list item, without re-parsing markdown or guessing at sentence boundaries.
In AI Search API
answer.blocks[] ships on every Envelope alongside the plain text and markdown views, three representations of the same answer for three different consumers. Blocks are typed (paragraph, heading, list, code, quote) rather than one undifferentiated string, which is what lets citation-tracking and GEO work operate at the level of a specific paragraph or list item instead of the whole answer. An answer with no detectable structure still returns at least one paragraph block, blocks are never omitted in favor of only the flat text.
"answer": {
"blocks": [
{ "type": "paragraph", "text": "…" },
{ "type": "list", "text": "…" }
]
}Related terms
See it in the product
Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract. Run a capture and read the fields yourself.