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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Barret Schloerke @schloerke.com · 27d

{otel} + #rstats is becoming a crazy partnership.
This project has driven me to use/write {promises} in ways that makes my 🧠 ache 😅. The reward is worth it!

See you at #PositConf2025 where I'll talk about this in more detail

Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · 27d

More #rstats + OpenTelemetry news: @schloerke.com finally got all of the async issues in {ellmer} and {shiny} sorted out and tracing now works!

Here's what combining {shiny} + {ellmer} + {httr2} + {mirai} + {otel} looks like today.

(All credit for the screenshots to @schloerke.com.)

A screenshot showing the Logfire tracing UI with traces from a Shiny app using ellmer, httr2, and mirai on the left and some attributes on the right.

A Shiny chatbot with a conversation about the weather in Atlanta, GA. It clearly serves as the source of the traces in the first image.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · 27d

More #rstats + OpenTelemetry news: @schloerke.com finally got all of the async issues in {ellmer} and {shiny} sorted out and tracing now works!

Here's what combining {shiny} + {ellmer} + {httr2} + {mirai} + {otel} looks like today.

(All credit for the screenshots to @schloerke.com.)

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · 29d

The internals of {ellmer} are like the final boss of modern #rstats package codebases: S7, httr2, promises, and coro *everywhere*. It really shows how to push the limit of what can be done with R.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · 29d

I think that's true! Isn't that good, though? The whole point of Positron was the desire to deliver something more than what VS Code could offer, even with high-quality extensions.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 8

What do you mean by "VS Code support"? I don't think we've had much involvement with vscode-r or {languageserver} at all; both seem like community efforts.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 8

Positron inherits much of the extension development experience from VS Code. In my experience it feels pretty good.

However, you are fairly limited in the kind of custom UI you can inject. Best to look here to see what's (generally) possible first: code.visualstudio.com/api/extensio...

Extending Workbench

Explain how to extend Visual Studio Code's workbench area with custom UI components

code.visualstudio.com

Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 8

More #rstats OpenTelemetry tidbits: I've revived the PR that adds instrumentation to the {httr2} package.

Here is what is looks like to run {httr2}'s own test suite while looked up to Logfire:

A screenshot showing the Logfire tracing UI with traces from an HTTP client on the left and some attributes on the right. The trace names and attributes indicate that they are emitted by the R package "httr2".

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 5

... meanwhile, internally, we're like "OH GOD THERE ARE SO MANY UX BUGS TO FIX".

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 5

There's been a big push at Posit this summer to get high-quality OpenTelemetry support out to the #rstats community (a longstanding dream of mine).

I think {mirai} is the first package release to showcase this work, and as per usual with @shikokuchuo.net, it was done in record time!

Charlie Gao @shikokuchuo.net · Sep 5

tidyverse blog: mirai 2.5.0

www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/09...

This milestone release delivers enhanced observability through OpenTelemetry, reproducible parallel RNG, and key user interface improvements.

We’ve also packed in twice as many changes as usual!
#Rstats #tidyverse

mirai 2.5.0

mirai - minimalist async evaluation framework for R - brings production-grade parallel and distributed computing to the ecosystem.

www.tidyverse.org

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 5

The other VS Code forks (Cursor, etc.) don't really seem to have leaned into this extensibility by adding APIs of their own, but #Positron has, and it's been a ton of fun to build #rstats tooling in Typescript because of this.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 5

In the last few months I've worked a fair bit in Typescript building "VS Code" extensions for #Positron. It's my first time using that language or the extension APIs, and I have to say that the teams at Microsoft have done some incredible work on both.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Sep 3

Somehow, for the third time in my life, I'm wondering if I need to write a #linux NSS module to solve my problems...

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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · Aug 29

odbc 1.6.2 is now on #rstats CRAN! A good few QOL improvements, especially for Databricks and Snowflake users: github.com/r-dbi/odbc/r...

Release odbc 1.6.2 · r-dbi/odbc

Fix hang when parsing exceptionally long database errors (#916). Fix retrieving multiple result sets from parametrized queries in cases when some parameters yield empty results (#927). Databric...

github.com

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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Posit @posit.co · Aug 29

Introducing Databot: an AI assistant for exploratory data analysis in #Python and #RStats!

A research preview in Positron, Databot is a tireless pair programmer to help you explore data.

Learn more about this tool and our philosophy behind it:

🤖 posit.co/blog/introdu...
⚠️ posit.co/blog/databot...

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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Posit @posit.co · Aug 28

Announcing the Posit Publisher VS Code extension!

This new tool makes it easy for #RStats and #Python users to deploy data science content, like Shiny apps, Quarto docs, and Jupyter notebooks, from #VSCode and Positron directly to Posit Connect.

Learn more and install open-vsx.org/extension/po...

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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Hadley Wickham @hadley.nz · Jul 25

🐘 ellmer 🐘 makes it easy and fun to use LLMs from #rstats, and 0.3.0 is out now. Read about the new streamlined chat() function, improvements to tool specifications, and more at www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/07....

ellmer 0.3.0

The newest version of ellmer introduces a simpler `chat()` interface that can works with any provider, a bunch of improvements to tool calling, and a handful of smaller quality of life improvements.

www.tidyverse.org

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jul 10

Privatelink woes subtweet?

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jul 1

We're having a hard time figuring out the correct (minimal-permission) API scope for using Vertex AI from the #rstats {ellmer} package. If you have access to Vertex (we don't) and want to test, here is where to start:

github.com/tidyverse/el...
github.com/tidyverse/el...
github.com/tidyverse/el...

Update API endpoint for Vertex AI, use working scope for auth by netique · Pull Request #598 · tidyverse/ellmer

github.com

Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Posit @posit.co · Jul 1

Ever wonder how the #tidyverse came to be? 🤔

#TheTestSet's first episode features @hadley.nz on his accidental empire of #RStats packages, bear encounters, and more!

Stream it at thetestset.co, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

#DataAnalytics #PodcastLaunch

Hadley Wickham in a white t-shirt and jeans sits on a light-colored couch across from Michael Chow, wearing a dark green shirt and pants, who is seated on an orange pouf. Between them is a white coffee table with books. In the background, there's a dark bar with shelves displaying numerous bottles, a wood-paneled wall, and a black, modern fireplace. Text overlay reads "Hadley Wickham CHIEF SCIENTIST, POSIT".

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jun 9

Small #rstats improvement for folks interested in RAG with {ragnar} (and just in time for their conference): github.com/tidyverse/ra...

Add support for using embedding models from Databricks by atheriel · Pull Request #45 · tidyverse/ragnar

Databricks hosts a couple of dedicated text embedding models through their Foundation Models API. This commit introduces embed_databricks() to give ragnar users access to them. Note that this is a ...

github.com

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jun 8

For those following the #rstats {ellmer} package: I got the chat_databricks() and chat_snowflake() providers working with tool calling this past week. IMHO this means these providers are no longer toys: they can be used with RAG (via {ragnar}) and other complex tasks like @simonpcouch.com's {btw}.

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jun 8

Second pass: traces from a RAG in Langfuse constructed using both #rstats {ragnar} and {ellmer}. This shows a tool call out to a text embedding model as well as a general-purpose one, which is a bit more realistic (and interesting).

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jun 8

Currently wiring up a simple #rstats ellmer chatbot to send traces to Langfuse. These LLM observability platforms have some pretty slick UI:

A screenshot showing a trace in Langfuse. Visible are chat completions and their underlying HTTP requests, a tool call span, and a root span called "invoke_agent".

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Aaron Jacobs @atheriel.bsky.social · Jun 8

OpenTelemetry is a hugely popular collection of SDKs and specifications for vendor-neutral observability, but that doesn't sound all that exciting in isolation. I'd suggest watching some demos for distributed tracing with one of the big platforms that implement it, e.g. Grafana Tempo.

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Reposted by Aaron Jacobs

Hadley Wickham @hadley.nz · Jun 3

Want to easily use LLMs from R? ellmer 0.2.0 provides:

• Batch & parallel processing
• A universal parameter interface
• Cost tracking
• Support for Mistral, Hugging Face, & Portkey

And much more! Read all about it at: www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/05... #rstats

ellmer 0.2.0

ellmer 0.2.0 lands with a swag of upgrades: Garrick Aden‑Buie joins the team, we make a couple of breaking changes, and add serious scale with `parallel_chat()` and `batch_chat()`. A new `params()` ...

www.tidyverse.org

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