Getting Started

Posit Assistant is a data analysis assistant that works across multiple environments — Positron and RStudio. It connects to your live R and Python sessions, sees your data, and helps you explore, visualize, build, and debug.

Install

Choose your platform:

• Positron — Pre-installed in recent versions. Configure a model provider and you’re ready.
• RStudio — Available in the latest RStudio beta. Includes chat and Next-Edit Suggestions.
• Terminal — The pa TUI for interactive or headless use.

Model Provider

Posit Assistant needs a model provider to power its responses.

• RStudio uses Posit AI — a managed service from Posit that gives you access to frontier LLMs through a single account. Just sign in and start chatting.
• Positron supports Posit AI as well as direct API access to other providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, and others. See the Positron setup guide for details.
• Terminal (TUI) uses Posit AI by default and supports other providers via the config file.

Your First Conversation

Once installed, open the chat panel and try something like:

• “Load the mtcars dataset and show me how mpg relates to weight”
• “What does this data look like?”
• “Build a dashboard showing sales by region”

Posit Assistant reads your session — loaded packages, data frames, and console history — so it generates code that works with your actual environment.

Key Concepts

A few things worth knowing early:

• Commands — Type /report to generate a Quarto document, /compact to reduce token usage, /plan to design before implementing, and more.
• Skills — Specialized knowledge modules that load automatically. When you ask about building a Shiny app, the shiny-bslib skill activates. You can also create your own.
• Memory — Place an AGENTS.md file in your project root to give the assistant persistent context about your project. Use /savememory to create one from a conversation.
• MCP Servers — Connect external tools via the Model Context Protocol for database access, API integrations, and more.

Next Steps

• Configuration — Customize model selection, runtime paths, permissions, and behavior.
• Guides — Walkthroughs for data exploration, building dashboards, debugging, and more.

Related Products

If you’re already a Positron user, you might be familiar with Positron Assistant or Databot. Despite their similar names, Positron Assistant and Posit Assistant are distinct coding assistants. This website documents how to use Posit Assistant. Posit Assistant combines the abilities of Positron Assistant and Databot, and is intended as their successor.

Posit AI is a managed LLM service that provides access to a variety of models through a single account.

The table below summarizes the difference between these four terms.

Name	Description	Status
Posit Assistant	Coding agent available in RStudio and Positron (and more)	Active
Posit AI	Model subscription service	Active
Positron Assistant	Coding agent available in Positron	Planned to be superseded by Posit Assistant in Q3 2026
Databot	EDA agent	Superseded by Posit Assistant