In case you weren't able to make it, @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote up the talk for the @posit.co OSS blog. We talked about the rise of "vibe analysis," the pitfalls of human-in-the-loop, and some new software from Posit. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10...

Correct, transparent, and reproducible data agents

An annotated walkthrough of our posit::conf(2026) keynote.

opensource.posit.co

Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 2w ago

Such an honor to keynote at posit::conf(2026). I still vividly remember the first conf keynote I ever saw, when @jennybryan.bsky.social spoke about debugging in San Francisco. Very grateful for the opportunity (especially to present alongside @sara-altman.bsky.social)!

Data analysis is often a branching and nonlinear process. We just shipped a feature in Posit Assistant to help with this; use /eda-log to keep track of loose ends in your analysis. @posit.co #databs #rstats opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

AI Newsletter: EDA log in Posit Assistant

A higher-level view of your data analysis conversations.

opensource.posit.co

Confused by Databot vs. Positron Assistant vs. Posit Assistant? Honestly, we don't blame you. @jcheng5.bsky.social's blog post explains how our AI data science agents evolved into the Posit Assistant we have today. Read the full story on the blog: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-06...

A brief and biased history of Posit data science agents

What we learned from Positron Assistant and Databot

opensource.posit.co

It seems like LLMs are getting much better at faithfully describing data visualizations that show surprising trends. With @sara-altman.bsky.social on the @posit.co open source blog: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-06...

AI Newsletter: LLMs are getting much better at interpreting counterintuitive plots

Model releases from the last couple months have shown a large jump in capability on our bluffbench eval, which measures agents' ability to faithfully describe plots showing surprising results.

opensource.posit.co

Fable 5 is the new highest scorer on bluffbench! The eval measures models' ability to accurately describe plots that show counterintuitive patterns. Six months ago, the strongest models were still in the single digits. simonpcouch.github.io/bluffbench/

The newest release of Posit Assistant, an agent for coding and data analysis, includes a "data cleaning mode." When enabled, the agent will run quality checks and surface decisions about e.g. import issues, factor levels, etc to the user. In the AI Newsletter: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-05...

RStudio now has next edit suggestions! I wrote a bit about how they work and have open-sourced the eval we used to engineer the system's prompt: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

Today we're releasing AI for RStudio. It's really, really good—I'd encourage you to point it at the messiest data sources you have and see what it can do. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

Join us on Tuesday at the Data Science Lab 🧪 We are joined by @sara-altman.bsky.social, who will show us how to explore and analyze data using AI assistants in #RStats or #Python! Feb 3 @ 12 pm ET: pos.it/dslab

In this week's newsletter, @simonpcouch.com and I share some interesting tidbits from Claude's constitution, an estimate of the electricity use of coding agents, and an update on our plot interpretation work.

Posit@posit.co · 9mo ago

🗞️ Here's the latest edition of the Posit AI newsletter, your biweekly roundup of AI news from Posit and beyond. This week's edition includes: • Claude's "constitution" • How much electricity do coding agents use? • Pre- and post-training And more! 📬 Read the newsletter: posit.co/blog/ai-news...

"LLMs [only] do a great job at interpreting plots that _don't_ contradict their expectations—it's sort of antithetical to the spirit of science." - @mike-thomas.bsky.social. Thanks for the coverage, yall! More on @sara-altman.bsky.social and I's bluffbench eval: posit.co/blog/llm-plo...

LLMs interpret plots well, until expectations interfere - Posit

posit.co

R-Podcast (Eric)@rpodcast.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Episode 219 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/... 📊 LLM Plot Interpretations @sara-altman.bsky.social @simonpcouch.com 🌎 Soil flux @phytobio.me & John Zobitz 🏎 futurize @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social @jonathankitt.bsky.social 🙏 #rstats #databs

More on LLMs and plot interpretation: they do fine in normal conditions, but struggle when the plot conflicts strongly with their priors. @simonpcouch.com and I investigated why and what might help: posit.co/blog/llm-plo...

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...

Local models are not there (yet) - Posit

LLMs that can run on your laptop are not yet capable enough to drive coding agents.

posit.co

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 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

🚀 The 3rd edition of the Posit AI Newsletter is out now! Curated by @sara-altman.bsky.social and @simonpcouch.com, this biweekly newsletter keeps you up to speed with #AI. This week: the #Claude degradation incident, posit::conf AI talks, and what "agents" actually are. 📬 posit.co/blog/2025-09...

So stoked to share about the first release of the Posit AI Newsletter! @sara-altman.bsky.social and I have been working on a pilot of this newsletter internally for a few months now—an opinionated and pragmatic snapshot of AI news released every two weeks. First edition: posit.co/blog/2025-08...