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; itās just this sidebar:
Thatās 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 weāve been doing some other rebuilding to let us do more with thisā¦)
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! Iāve not played with that specific feature since I donāt have an Anthropic key. I do have an OpenRouter Key that gives me access to Anthropic models but I canāt 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, Iād 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 thatā¦
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 hadnāt come across it before and it was an interesting listen.
New podcast episodes are also listed near the bottom of our new āAboutā page (which is also the logged-out homepage): About | Observable.
