Just watched this interesting interview with Mike on Posit. At one point, Mike mentions that new AI features have been soft launched into Observable Desktop. As far as I can tell, though, the latest version of Desktop is V1.6.0 from March. When can we expect to see and play with it?
I think that podcast was recorded back around March! 
The features are in; it’s just this sidebar:
That’s it! The most interesting thing about it is that it can inspect runtime values, which allows for some cool back and forth between interactive elements in the notebook and agent inspection. Have you played around with it at all? It currently requires entering an Anthropic API key.
(Since March we’ve been doing some other rebuilding to let us do more with this…)
Thanks @tophtucker! You know, I thought about the possibility that the interview was that far back but it seemed doubtful.
I have played with Desktop a fair amount and I like it a lot! I’ve not played with that specific feature since I don’t have an Anthropic key. I do have an OpenRouter Key that gives me access to Anthropic models but I can’t justify another subscription for just this at the present time.
In fact, if I had to list my top three wish list items for the V2 notebook, I’d have to say:
- Web version, in addition to Desktop,
- Model agnostic AI integration, and
- Improved export to standalone versions.
Hm yeah we should really have a web version by now. I will work on that…
OK, web version is ready for testing: https://new.observablehq.com/
Has AI with some free tokens for you to try it out.
More info:
@mcmcclur thanks for linking that podcast! I hadn’t come across it before and it was an interesting listen.
New podcast episodes are also listed near the bottom of our new “About” page (which is also the logged-out homepage): About | Observable.
I’ve been using that and it’s super nice in Desktop (in the web editor, too, but I quickly ran out of tokens). For the Desktop, I did enter my Anthropic key, and I’ve happily been using the AI since then, but I cannot see any usage on my Anthropic key in the Anthropic console, actually… is API usage in Desktop not yet funneled through the key?
Hm! Odd. Just tested again and I can see my usage. Are you sure you’re looking at the key & account you actually entered? And if you go to menu bar → Observable Desktop → About Observable Desktop, what version do you see? (I’m on Version 1.6.0 (1.0).)
Yes, indeed odd. I have the same (latest) version of Observable desktop. And I found the key within HOME/Library/Application Support/com.observablehq.notebook-desktop/store.json, and I actually have a single different key in my Anthropic console, with and no costs incurred so far. I thought I may have a different Anthropic account, but I used my Google Account, so that can’t be. I don’t know what’s going on, but the key that I’m using in Observable Desktop appears nowhere as far as I can see… Anyway, I don’t think that’s a problem of Observable, so nevermind for now. I will keep using it until I get a message that my budget is up, I guess.
One thing I noticed is that there appears to be no memory of old Chats in Observable Desktop. Once you close the AI sidebar, things are gone. I think that would be nice to get back. In the Web-Browser is appears to be kind of the opposite, by the way: There, the last AI conversation within notebooks (not Observable chats) is always kept, and there is always exactly one, with no option to start a second one per notebook.
This has all been massively useful already, thanks for working on such an amazing product. Can’t wait to see these developments as official and finished releases.
Re: key — huh, weird! I had that issue once and then realized that you can have API keys in different Claude “workspaces”, so you might have to check them all:
Re: saving chats — on web it’s saved until you refresh the page, and the only way to get a fresh chat is to refresh the page. We definitely want multiple persisted threads. (We’re focused on database support right now, but we’ll get back to that at some point…)
Oh boy, I’m sorry, mystery solved… I have another Anthropic account with another email that the key was from. Nevermind, sorry to bother you with this.
I love Observable 2 notebooks! One thing I noticed the other day was that at least on Desktop, Undos are restricted to specific cells. So if I delete one cell, then edit another cell, then any Undo from that point will not restore the deleted cell. I haven’t checked how this is with the online editor, but at least with Desktop this can be quite scary (I literally have destroyed a notebook once). This is particularly dangerous in combination with another Desktop quirk, which is that it implicitly saves everything. I can’t just close and say “Don’t save”. None of this is so dangerous if one tracks files with git, which is of course anyway best practice, but occasionally I have quick notebooks I’m working on and don’t immediately put them into git.
Otherwise super thrilled about the developments. I’m so convinced I even went to a Pro account now. Keep up the good work!
Glad you solved the key mystery!! No bother at all, glad you’re paying attention to usage.
Re: versioning, yes, agree with everything.
In both web and desktop, each cell has a transient undo stack. It’s useful for quick granular editing, but it isn’t a persistent versioning solution; it’s lost when you close and reopen a notebook (or delete the cell).
In web, we are saving a new version every time you run a cell, same as in notebooks 1.0. But we haven’t actually built the version history browser yet! In a pinch, you can load the same notebook in 1.0 and revert to an earlier version there, then go back to the 2.0 editor.
In desktop, yes, the idea is that you should be using git; that is the only real versioning option. For me, that’s usually much more “heavyweight” than I want, so I gravitate to the lightweight feeling of the web editor. I agree I wanna be able to disable autosave!! I have also lost work that way. Very annoying.
Grateful for your Pro support!! 
Thank you!