Turn Claude into an expert on writing {testthat} #Rstats 📦 version 3 R tests with the Claude Testing R Packages skill by @posit.co github.com/posit-dev/sk... That repo has other skills including how to use brand.yml with Quarto and Shiny github.com/posit-dev/sk... #GenAI

This whole thing is amazing, but tucked away in a dropdown at the end of the markdown is... quite seriously the best essay I've read on the environmental impacts of AI?

Happy holidays! 🎄 I snuck in a {btw} release just before CRAN went on vacation for the year. {btw} is an #RStats package full of tools for LLMs, including a new tool for running R code. Here's a quick demo using `btw_app()` to create a quick festive ggplot2 from holiday movie titles. Cheers! 🧑‍🎄

Context windows out to thwart all our beautiful dreams

In this edition of the @posit.co AI Newsletter, some 🎄Year In Review🎄, notes on GPT 5.2, and an experimental AI product for RStudio users. posit.co/blog/2025-12...

infer 1.1.0, a package implementing an expressive grammar for statistical inference, is on CRAN! In a change originally motivated by @allendowney.bsky.social's posit::conf(2024) keynote, the package now supports arbitrary test statistics. Read more: github.com/tidymodels/i...

Why do I drink coffee past noon? Why do I do this thing?

Thinking about running local models with coding agents like Positron Assistant? 💻 A new evaluation by @simonpcouch.com and @sara-altman.bsky.social suggests we aren't there yet. Between hardware hurdles and performance gaps, hosted models are still the best bet for now. posit.co/blog/local-m...

While coding agents like Positron Assistant and side::kick() are technically compatible with LLMs small enough to run on your laptop, the results leave much to be desired. New on the @posit.co blog from @sara-altman.bsky.social and I: posit.co/blog/local-m...

Great and easy to understand post on using LLMs, i.e. in #positron #rstats

GPT 5.2 is now included in our R code generation eval! The -Pro version is slightly SoTA at a substantially higher price point than similar performers. Read more: skaltman-model-eval-app.share.connect.posit.cloud

New data from @sara-altman.bsky.social & @simonpcouch.com, using the vitals and ellmer packages, looks at LLM performance metrics for #RStats. 👀 Sneak peek: Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, & OpenAI GPT-5 lead in generating correct R code. Read the full breakdown: posit.co/blog/r-llm-e...

Episode 215 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/... 🤖 AI Newsl @simonpcouch.com @sara-altman.bsky.social 🎙️ The Test Set @mchow.com @hadley.nz @wesmckinney.com 🤔 Haskell for DS @jonocarroll.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social Sam Parmar 🙏 #RStats #databs

A new release of chores is now on #rstats CRAN! There are now some LLMs tiny enough to run on a laptop that are capable of powering chores helpers. Here's a real-time demo with a model running on my Macbook. Read more: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12...

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

A new release of odbc, a package that allows for connecting to various databases, is on #rstats CRAN! Just a few bug fixes in this release. github.com/r-dbi/odbc/r...

This edition of the @posit.co AI Newsletter highlights a few frontier model releases, a new R coding LLM evaluation dashboard, and a post from @wesmckinney.com on LLMs' difficulty with arithmetic! posit.co/blog/2025-12...

I get the appeal of local LLMs—free, private, no big tech. That said, they're not yet ready to power coding agents like Positron Assistant or Databot. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12...

It's Spotify Wrapped season🎁 Continuing the tradition of analyzing my music listening data with #rstats tidyverse, this time with Databot: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12...

A new release of vitals, a package for LLM evaluation in #rstats, is now on CRAN!🎄 This release includes all sorts of quality-of-life improvements; image support, precise latency measurement, better error messages, and more comprehensive logging. github.com/tidyverse/vi...

I am tremendously grateful for open source, as it’s had such a huge impact on my career. That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy that Posit has committed to the @opensourcepledge.com. Read about our contributions to non Posit projects at posit.co/blog/posit-o....

Everyone is welcome to join us at our next virtual meetup for a talk on using #GenerativeAI in R with Sharon Machlis @smachlis.bsky.social — Tech Journalist and Data Professional. RSVP 🔗 www.meetup.com/rladies-pari.... #RStats #RStatsFr #Rprogramming #RLadies #GenAI @rladies.org @posit.co

📣🚨 Very much looking forward to hearing from @frankiethull.bsky.social about the intersection of coded data viz and AI assistants! 👀🚀 Join us Tuesday Dec 2nd, at 3pm Eastern to hear about {ggpal2}, a {chores} extension. #ggplot2 #ai #chores bit.ly/RxAI-join

The LLM privacy question comes up (rightly so) on every data community call I'm on. I've had sooo many questions myself. #databs #rstats #pydata Good resource: posit.co/blog/trust-l... Also, have you seen side::kick in RStudio? simonpcouch.github.io/side/

The newest edition of the @posit.co AI Newsletter is out! Some notes on TOON, several open source updates, and a callout to two recent blog posts from @sara-altman.bsky.social and I. posit.co/blog/2025-11...

Often, the first question I get when sharing about Posit's LLM tools is "Will this expose my data?" @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote about the trust relationships involved when using our AI tools on the @posit.co blog. posit.co/blog/trust-l...

Introducing bluffbench, a new tool to evaluate how well LLMs actually see data plots. When we trick LLMs with secret #RStats transformations, they can miss the visual contradiction. bluffbench helps us measure this "blind spot" in AI coding agents. Learn more: posit.co/blog/introdu...

Gemini 3 is out! I've been poking at it with `side::kick()` and am impressed so far. In case you want to connect to it with the #rstats ellmer package, I wrote some quick notes in a Gist: gist.github.com/simonpcouch/...

A core capability for data science agents is making plots and learning from them. While developing Databot and Positron Assistant, though, we've seen that LLMs tend to ignore plotted trends when they're counterintuitive. From @sara-altman.bsky.social and I: posit.co/blog/introdu...

ellmer 0.4.0 is out now! New features include Claude caching & file uploads, support for newer OpenAI responses API, web search tools, and better security. Read more at tidyverse.org/blog/2025/11... #rstats

Once you've built something with ellmer, how can you tell whether it's any good? My posit::conf(2025) talk on LLM evaluation with #rstats is now live. :) www.youtube.com/watch?v=HciR...

🤖 Introducción a #Tidymodels Aprendé a usar tidymodels para crear y evaluar modelos de #MachineLearning en #RStats Con Francisco Cardozo y Edgar Ruiz 📅 1 Dic, 18:00–20:00 UTC-3 – Online 💵 Estudiantes USD 5 · Académicos USD 10 · Industria USD 15 🔗 www.eventbrite.com.ar/e/1962543491... #LatinR2025

To be effective, data science agents need to be able to read plots reliably. @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote about some concerning findings on LLMs' ability to interpret plots when the content contradicts their expectations on the @posit.co blog. posit.co/blog/introdu...

This edition of @sara-altman.bsky.social and I's AI Newsletter is a @posit.co heavy one! Support for new model providers in Positron Assistant, an experimental coding agent for RStudio, a conference on #rstats + AI this week, and more. :) posit.co/blog/2025-11...

🗞️ New edition of the Posit AI Newsletter is up on the Posit blog! Curated by @sara-altman.bsky.social and @simonpcouch.com, this week covers LLM introspection, an RStudio coding agent, custom providers in Positron Assistant, and more. Read the latest: posit.co/blog/2025-11...

side::kick() is model-agnostic. When you first launch the app, a setup flow will detect whether any common providers are already configured to help you get started. #rstats

pkgdown 2.2.0 now out — tidyverse.org/blog/2025/11.... Main feature is new build_llm_docs() which makes your websites easier to understand by LLMs. (Which you can easily turn off if desired) #rstats

I'm excited to share side::kick(), an experimental open-source coding agent for RStudio built entirely in R. It can interact with your files, communicate with your active #rstats session, and run code. Check it out: github.com/simonpcouch/...

Tomorrow morning! Come by!

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate. Hope you and/or your kids get some nice candy and fun times tonight! Here's a silly little post on making neon ghosts in #rstats with #ggplot2 drmowinckels.io/blog/2025/ne...

mcptools 0.2.0 is on CRAN! mcptools implements the Model Context Protocol in #rstats, allowing ellmer users to share context and tools more easily between LLM applications. Read more: github.com/posit-dev/mc...

I'll be keynoting at R/Pharma a week from today! The conference is free and virtual. I'll be focused on the mundane use cases of LLMs for wrangling data with #rstats, and the content should feel applicable for folks outside of pharma—come through. :) Register: events.zoom.us/ev/Ai-geyS63...

Thank you so much, Jen! If all goes well, that submission will be the final #TidyTuesday for 2025! It is *so* helpful when people submit datasets! I've been able to implement features to catch errors in datasets, and I have more on the way. Maybe I'll even finally finish the easier to use website!

I sincerely apologize for the mcptools package not having a cute lil feller on its hex sticker in its first release. This will be corrected in the next #rstats CRAN release!!! posit-dev.github.io/mcptools/

The newest release of @sara-altman.bsky.social and I's AI Newsletter covers support for GitHub Copilot as a chat provider in Positron Assistant, two releases from Anthropic, and reflections on water and electricity usage of data centers. Read it on the @posit.co blog: posit.co/blog/2025-10...

GitHub Copilot powering Positron Assistant Chat mode is huge for my job! We have Posit Connect and our only LLM is GitHub Copilot. The only way to get copilot to edit and run code directly on the posit connect server was to remote-ssh from VSCode. All I need to do convince IT to enable positron.

🗞️ New edition of the Posit AI Newsletter is up on the Posit blog! Curated by @sara-altman.bsky.social and @simonpcouch.com, the newsletter keeps you up to date: Claude Haiku 4.5 GitHub Copilot support in Positron Assistant AI water and energy use 📬 Read the newsletter: posit.co/blog/2025-10...

We are extremely excited about this! @lionelhenry.bsky.social did an awesome job shepherding this feature, and we think that both decimal alignment and using commas as "column guides" for your `tribble()` calls makes QC-ing your code easier and less error prone!

I'll be keynoting at R/Pharma in a few weeks! The conference is free and virtual; all are welcome to join. My talk "Practical AI for data science" is on November 5th and should be broadly accessible for #rstats users, regardless of industry. :) Learn more & register: rinpharma.com

Claude Code tip: prompt "use sub-agents" and it will do exactly that, firing up multiple parallel sub-agents to achieve a task, each with a fresh context "Write markdown documentation for the context passed to each of the templates in this project. Use sub-agents." simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/11/...