Introducing Positron Assistant!

[jthomasmock]

Note

The Positron Assistant is currently an experimental feature in Positron, available in 2025.06.0-167 and beyond. We are actively improving the user experience and functionality, so please provide feedback and report any issues you encounter.

Positron Assistant currently supports:

• Anthropic Claude for Chat-only
• GitHub Copilot for code completions only

We are planning to expose additional model provider backends over time.

Refer to the Positron Assistant User Guide for detailed information on how to set up and use Positron Assistant.

Positron Assistant is an AI client that provides LLM integration within Positron, both for chat and for inline completions. Use Positron Assistant to generate code, ask questions, get help with debugging, refactor, and get suggestions for next steps in your data science projects.

Why use Positron Assistant over other AI clients?

The Positron Assistant offers novel data science and Positron-specific context compared to other IDE AI tooling. We provide a data-science-centric IDE for the user and allow the LLM to interact with the most important parts of Positron to get better context for better results!

A majority of data science work happens interactively with live data during development. Users load local or remote data, seek to understand it via cleaning, transformations, visualizations, and then modeling, then ultimately generate reproducible code. While the full code on disk is the ultimate source of truth and gives you the ability to reproduce the results, the ephemeral state is where a data scientist is actually working the majority of the time. As such, existing AI clients that only have access to the code on disk are limited in their ability to provide useful suggestions and context-aware completions for data science.

We use tool-calling heavily within Positron to allow the LLMs to directly interact with Positron’s novel data science features. We have built out key integration points that allow the LLM to parse and interact with the current state of the Positron IDE, and will continue to expand these capabilities over time.

A few examples of these integration points include Positron’s:

• Variables pane, providing names, dimensions, and column names of dataframes and Python/R based database connections, as well as metadata for arrays, lists, and other objects in memory
• Plots pane for describing the current plot or suggesting variations and next steps for iterating on the current plot
• Console, available to the model for viewing inputs and code outputs, as well as allowing the user or an AI agent to execute code in the console and view the output
• Session state, providing what language is active in the console session (R or Python, including version), what packages are loaded, and what packages are installed

All of that Positron-specific context is in addition to the core capabilities of what traditional software-oriented GenAI clients have (active files, selected lines of code, files in project, training data in the model, etc).

Configuring Positron Assistant

To learn more about the Positron Assistant, including turning it on and adding Model Providers, please see the Positron Assistant User Guide.

[ndiquattro]

Excited about this!

Do you know if it's in the near-term to also enable chat with Copilot? I'm trying to decide whether to go through some rigamarole to get an anthropic API key or just wait for further copilot integration. Thanks!

[jmcphers]

The Anthropic API uses token (use based) pricing. See their API pricing here: https://www.anthropic.com/pricing#api

[ntluong95]

I meant I want to know about the actual price when using, like with 1M token, what I can usually do?

[jmcphers]

It's difficult to be precise, but very roughly speaking you can think of each conversation with the assistant as consuming a few thousand tokens. I use Assistant multiple times a day (as part of developing it) and don't go through more than ~$10 in credits a month for Positron-initiated use.

[ndiquattro]

I navigated the rigamarole and acquired a key! One follow-up question, I was instructed to avoid the Files API, since that route isn't covered by our agreement for data privacy with Anthropic. Does assistant use the Files API in any contexts? Thanks again!

[juliasilge]

It does not! You can confirm for yourself by perusing this file to see how we call the Anthropic API.

[tomasrei]

Hi! Great work, Looking forward to trying this!

Currently, when using vscode, I get access to github copilot, claude (and I believe some other AI APIs) via my PRO github account. Is it possible to activate the chat and code completion via a github PRO account only, or do I need a claude account as well? Thanks.

[juliasilge]

Can you say more about what you mean here:

However it doesnt appears in the list of providers in the in-line completion

Are you meaning that you do not see this in the bottom right when you click on the robot?

[roimartins]

In the bottom right it looks Github Copilot is registered :

However in the Ctrl + I , in line interface is not listed any Language Model I can pick . When i click on "Add language model" I can see "github Copilot" options igned but when i select it and press "Done" , the inline interface still do not provide any option i can choose.

[juliasilge]

Ah, when you use Ctrl/Cmd+I in your file, that is actually a chat feature. The completions are the "ghost text" that gets generated in your file that looks like this:

You can read this VS Code documentation to get a better understanding of what the features of completions are: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/ai-powered-suggestions

[roimartins]

ah , i got it . The chat features arent yet avaialble , is the autocompletion what works atm . Looking forward for chat features , it looks very useful extension . So far only good surprises with Positron .

[juliasilge]

The chat features are available, but not with GitHub Copilot. Right now, what we support is

• Anthropic for chat only
• GitHub Copilot for code completions only

We are planning to expose additional model provider backends as we move forward!

[davidrsch]

I tried using a local model via Ollama, but couldn’t get it to work. I’m curious, will there be official support for Ollama in the near future? Or is Posit more likely to wait for GitHub Copilot to be open sourced and instead focus on developing tools tailored for data science?

One feature I’d really love to see in Positron Assistant is the ability to be able to set it to use vignettes and package documentation as contextual references. For example, I’ve recently been working on implementing a custom engine for tidymodels, and examples on this are quite limited. In my experience, LLM assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, or even Copilot in VS Code often fall short in these niche R scenarios, I’ve ended up completing some tasks faster manually.

Being able to ground responses in actual package docs or vignettes could make a huge difference for complex workflows like this. I think it’d be a very compelling feature.

[jthomasmock]

Hi @davidrsch -- as far as model providers, we do not currently support Ollama and are unlikely to prioritize local models in the short term, as models with sufficient quality generally consume too much RAM at this time.

Medium-term we are planning to add support for other providers such as Google Gemini Code Assist.

Longterm we are also planning on supporting internally hosted models through tools like vllm.

As far as the other feedback:

One feature I’d really love to see in Positron Assistant is the ability to be able to set it to use vignettes and package documentation as contextual references

Yes, we agree! There's currently an issue open for working with web-based documentation: #7649 and I've also opened: #8016 for your feature request.

[ntluong95]

hi @jthomasmock, I started to add my Google Gemini API to Positron Assistant and it seems to work. However, if I install the new version, it's gone and I have to add the API key again. Do you experience the same thing?

[juliasilge]

We don't yet officially support Google Gemini and are tracking that support in #6743 and related issues.

[johnryan412]

Is there a way to add a delay before copilot attempts to inline complete your code in positron? Would be helpful if it would wait 2-3 seconds.

[testlabauto]

There is not currently a way to do this with Positron. Can you elaborate a little on why this would be useful?

[johnryan412]

When I'm typing out code, I don't always need it to guess what I'm about to type next. It becomes intrusive. RStudio has an option "Show code suggestions after keyboard idle (ms)" where you can set a delay before copilot will provide suggestions which is nice.

[testlabauto]

Oh, ok. That sounds like a good idea. Filed an enhancement for this: #8066

[abduazizR]

Not sure if this is relevant, but can I use positron assistant to generate git commits?

[testlabauto]

It cannot currently do this, but it is a great idea. I filed an enhancement: #8072

[ntluong95]

Will the Positron Assistant be able to create project, says "Creating a shinyApp from prompt", or getting input as the user's CSV file and the prompt (could be README file, describing research questions or project aims), it could create necessary files and code?

[juliasilge]

We definitely have plans of this nature in mind! If you are specifically interested in generating Shiny apps, you might want to check out Shiny Assistant in the meantime: https://shiny.posit.co/blog/posts/shiny-assistant/

[ntluong95]

I am aware of Shiny Assistant, that's why I am asking. Having a way to integrate that into Positron is great.

[jarbet]

Any plans to support Google Gemini API for chat in the future? They offer a free tier :)

[juliasilge]

Yep, we are tracking this feature in #6743, if you want to give a 👍 or similar.

[jarbet]

Yep, we are tracking this feature in #6743, if you want to give a 👍 or similar.

Done!

In the meantime, FWIW I'll share my current Positron LLM setup in case it helps others:

• I use Positron Assistant with Github Copilot since I get this for free as an Academic. Thus I can use Copilot for code completion.
• I use the Continue Extension with Google Gemini API (for free) to ask questions about my code and help edit code.

[Ulaskarakoc]

I just played with Assistant using Claude API.
Turned out few questions cost me 200 k tokens! (0.5 dollars) I only added one short R script as context in a project folder which includes csv files, about 20 R files etc.
Is it possible that Positron Assistant sent all R files and possibly data files to Claude?

[jmcphers]

No, it doesn't send the whole project up to Claude unless you tell it to (or it queries it in Agent mode). Many of those are system prompts, internal tools, etc.; Claude in general just uses a lot of tokens.You can get some more detailed information by going to the Output panel > Assistant where it'll tell you exactly what's going up and roughly how many tokens are involved.

Also, what version of Positron are you using? In later versions we've added support for caching with Anthropic's API which should reduce token usage on subsequent questions.

[Ulaskarakoc]

I use the latest version of Positron (2025.07.0). When I add context, the token use is ridiculously high, despite the small size of R file added as context.
I asked a simple question related to R file when current file is on, the total token use is about 17-18 k. Then I turned off the current file view, then again, simple question costs 7-8 k.
All these simple 4-5 exercises cost 0.19 dollars. Is that all normal?
At this rate, I think I will keep using my normal Claude Pro and keep going back and forth between Claude app and Positron.

[sharon-wang]

@Ulaskarakoc do you recall if Assistant was making tool calls as part of its response?

[Ulaskarakoc]

I do not think so.

[zachcp]

Fantastic work! Can we customize the mcp tools available to the Assistant?

[jmcphers]

Yes, you can. Assistant can use MCP tools just like Copilot can, and most of the UX is the same.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/chat/mcp-servers

(The above documentation is for VS Code 1.102, but Positron is currently using 1.100, so not all features are available. We're working on an update.)

[zachcp]

Beautiful. Will give it a proper go. Thank you.