Join the conversation as we shape the future of AI in RStudio!
This space is for our private beta participants to share their real-world experiences with the Posit Assistant and Next-Edit Suggestions. Ask questions, showcase how you’re using the new tools, and help us refine as we continue to iterate. Your feedback directly impacts the tools we're building for the entire data science community.
Not yet in the beta program? Join the waitlist: https://posit.co/products/ai/
Docs: https://posit-ai-beta.share.connect.posit.cloud/
Bugs & Feature Requests: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/new/choose
First impression is amazing. It will be a great tool and addition to Rstudio. Much needed for people who don't want to leave Rstudio for other AI IDEs. Best thing about it is that it understands the analysis flow and other things that a professional statistician does. Great job team.
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Definitely enjoying the beta, however I've found myself moving back and forth from other AI coding tools for the following reasons:
- I have a tough time getting the assistant to consistently put code in a file. Often times, I will ask it to write me a function to do some task, and it will write it but execute the function in the console. This means I can't examine the code. What I really want is something like claude code that will edit a file and allow me to accept/reject the changes.
- Speaking of changes, would be great to see them in the file, like in cursor.
- Lastly, the lack of a plan mode is a huge pain point. I want the AI to take on larger changes and refactors, but I don't want to give it free reign. Plan mode in cursor and claude code has been such a boon to my workflow that I would love to see this in Rstudio as well.
This is really helpful feedback, Demetri. Thank you.
Can you please share a bit more about what aspects of plan mode with Cursor/Claude Code your find most beneficial?
Gladly!
First, might be good to understand the use case for plan mode. When I know what I need to do and how to do it , plan mode is really good. I can give Claude enough detail without having to write the code myself. The benefit of plan mode is that I can see, from a high level, what claude is going to do and then either accept the plan or correct claude. This strikes a nice balance between verifiability in what will be produced and how much effort I need to give in the prompting.
As an example, our unit testing structure requires generating sql queries and then comparing them against a static string. If left to its own devices, claude will typically just check that some substrings exist in the generated query rather than use my preferred method of testing. But if I use plan mode, and tell claude Use function_compare() to compare the generated query against the expected query. Look at file_1.go, file_2.go to see examples of how this is done. mimic this as closely as possible, then claude is more likely to succeed. This is good because I get the outcome I want without investing too much time into instructing claude or writing out the code myself. Usually, I will even ask claude to provide code snippets of how it plans to implement something in the plan document which increases my trust that I can succeed in whatever task I am setting out to do.
The plan also gives the AI some "rails". The plan is something the I or the AI can always refer back to, and I have found that if I have a good plan but the AI goes off the rails, I can always stop, edit the plan, and then ask the AI to implement the plan from scratch.
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