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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 1d

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...

2025-11-07 AI Newsletter - Posit

Anthropic tested whether LLMs can introspect, Posit added support for AWS Bedrock and custom providers in Positron Assistant, and OpenAI finalized its for-profit shift toward a $1T IPO.

posit.co

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Posit @posit.co · 4d

🗞️ 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...

2025-11-07 AI Newsletter - Posit

Anthropic tested whether LLMs can introspect, Posit added support for AWS Bedrock and custom providers in Positron Assistant, and OpenAI finalized its for-profit shift toward a $1T IPO.

posit.co

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 4d

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

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 5d

Yep, that's correct.

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 5d

Nice! You can use it inside of the regular Viewer, but the app might feel a little constrained on space. :)

The full-height sidebar is currently in the RStudio Dailies and I believe will be available in a stable release in the next month or two.

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Hadley Wickham @hadley.nz · 5d

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

pkgdown 2.2.0

The latest version of pkgdown automatically builds markdown files that make it easy for LLMs to use your website.

tidyverse.org

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 6d

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/...

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 7d

Tomorrow morning! Come by!

Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 13d

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...

A title slide reading "Practical AI for data science" and my name and title.

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

ᴅʀ. ᴍᴏᴡɪɴᴄᴋᴇʟ'ꜱ @drmowinckels.io · 11d

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...

Neon Ghosts with ggplot2 - Dr. Mowinckel’s

Make your own glowing, wiggly ghosts in R with a dash of randomness and a lot of neon.

drmowinckels.io

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 12d

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...

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 12d

Ha, in case it's better timing for you, there will be a replay of the recording 11 hours later with a live Q&A (with a sleepy Simon😆) after! rinpharma.com/docs/RPH2025/

But yes, talks will be recorded and shared after the conference. :) Have a great birthday.

R/Pharma Virtual 2025 – R/Pharma

R/Pharma Virtual Schedule

rinpharma.com

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 13d

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...

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Jon Harmon (he/him/his) @jonthegeek.com · 13d

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!

Jen Richmond @jenrichmondphd.bsky.social · 14d

Woot, just submitted another dataset to #TidyTuesday and now there are 5 PRs waiting for Jon to review.

I screenrecorded the process, so if you want to see how EASY it is to contribute a dataset to this AMAZING #rstats community, check out this video.

youtu.be/Kp7pyYwLcwc

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 14d

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/

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 15d

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...

2025-10-24 AI Newsletter - Posit

Anthropic introduces the cost-effective Claude Haiku 4.5 and the new "Skills" feature, while the broader AI discussion shifts to the growing impact of data center electricity consumption.

posit.co

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

simon coulombe @coulsim.bsky.social · 18d

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.

Posit @posit.co · 18d

🗞️ 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...

2025-10-24 AI Newsletter - Posit

Anthropic introduces the cost-effective Claude Haiku 4.5 and the new "Skills" feature, while the broader AI discussion shifts to the growing impact of data center electricity consumption.

posit.co

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Posit @posit.co · 18d

🗞️ 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...

2025-10-24 AI Newsletter - Posit

Anthropic introduces the cost-effective Claude Haiku 4.5 and the new "Skills" feature, while the broader AI discussion shifts to the growing impact of data center electricity consumption.

posit.co

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Davis Vaughan @davisvaughan.bsky.social · 21d

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!

Lionel Henry @lionelhenry.bsky.social · 21d

I'm excited to share a new version of the Air formatter for #rstats, with support for tabular formatting! Super useful with `tibble::tribble()` calls or `data.table::fcase()`.

It's currently experimental as we're looking to get feedback on the feature, so please let us know what you think.

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 22d

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

R/Pharma

The conference is a scientifically & industry oriented, collegial event focused on the use of R in the development of pharmaceuticals.

rinpharma.com

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · 26d

Related to this so much. I keep thinking to myself "maybe they're good enough now..." and I try and inevitably end up working more slowly and less joyfully🫠

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · Oct 11

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/...

⏺ I'll help you write markdown documentation for the context passed to each template in this project. Let me start by exploring the codebase to understand the template structure and then use sub-agents to document them comprehensively.

⏺ Search(pattern: "**/*.html")
⎿ Found 47 files (ctrl+o to expand)

⏺ Search(pattern: "render.*template|render_template")
⎿ Found 16 files (ctrl+o to expand)

[...]

⏺ Now let me launch sub-agents to analyze different template contexts in parallel:

⏺ Task(Document index template context)
⎿ Done (12 tool uses · 86.4k tokens · 1m 13s)

⏺ Task(Document database template context)
⎿ Done (15 tool uses · 55.4k tokens · 1m 41s)

⏺ Task(Document table template context)
⎿ Done (14 tool uses · 85.2k tokens · 1m 44s)

⏺ Task(Document query/row template contexts)
⎿ Done (17 tool uses · 78.7k tokens · 1m 55s)

⏺ Task(Document special template contexts)
⎿ Done (26 tool uses · 116.1k tokens · 1m 50s)

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · Oct 11

THIS

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Reposted by Simon P. Couch

Posit @posit.co · Oct 10

🚀 The 4th edition of the Posit AI Newsletter is out!

This biweekly, bite-sized update by @sara-altman.bsky.social and @simonpcouch.com covers Claude Sonnet 4.5, OpenAI investments, situational awareness, and more.

Read the full issue here: posit.co/blog/2025-10...

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · Oct 8

ICYMI, @sara-altman.bsky.social and I have been writing a biweekly newsletter on AI and open source data science on the @posit.co blog!

A bit about how that came to be on my #rstats blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-10...

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Simon P. Couch @simonpcouch.com · Oct 7

Oh, I see someone else suggested it first! Nice!

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