Interact with Large Language Models in RStudio • chattr

Intro
Install
Using
How it works
Keyboard Shortcut
- How to setup the keyboard shortcut

Intro

chattr is an interface to LLMs (Large Language Models). It enables interaction with the model directly from RStudio and Positron. chattr allows you to submit a prompt to the LLM from your script, or by using the provided Shiny Gadget.

This package’s main goal is to aid in exploratory data analysis (EDA) tasks. The additional information appended to your request, provides a sort of “guard rails”, so that the packages and techniques we usually recommend as best practice, are used in the model’s responses.

Install

To install the CRAN version of this package use:

install.packages("chattr")

If you wish to use the development version use:

pak::pak("mlverse/chattr")

Using

Starting with version 0.3, chattr integrates with LLM’s via the ellmer package. ellmer has a growing list of LLM integrations, including OpenAI, Gemini, Deepseek and others.

There are several ways to let chattr know which LLM to use:

Pre-set an R option - Pass the ellmer connection command you wish to use in the .chattr_chat option, for example: options(.chattr_chat = ellmer::chat_anthropic()). If you add that code to your .Rprofile, chattr will use that as the default model and settings to use every time you start an R session. Use the usethis::edit_r_profile() command to easily edit your .Rprofile
Use an ellmer object - You can pass an ellmer chat object directly to chattr_use():
```
  my_chat <- ellmer::chat_anthropic()
  chattr_use(my_chat)
```
Named model - You pass one of several pre-defined provider/model setups. These setups are represented by labels set by chattr. At this time, the combinations cover 3 providers: OpenAI, Databricks, and Ollama. To use, simply pass the label to chattr_use. To see a full list of the available pre-defined combinations and their argument values see Available models. For example, if you wish to use OpenAI’s GPT 4.1 Nano model, you simply pass the corresponding label:
```
  chattr_use("gpt41-nano")
```

Select one from a menu (legacy) - If nothing is passed to chattr_use(), and no option is set, chattr will try to create the ellmer chat for you. It will try to figure if you have authentication tokens for OpenAI, Databricks, and checks if Ollama is running on your machine. chattr then returns a menu based on the providers it was able to find:

  chattr_use()

  ── chattr - Available models 
  Select the number of the model you would like to use:

  1: Databricks - databricks-dbrx-instruct (databricks-dbrx) 
  2: Databricks - databricks-meta-llama-3-3-70b-instruct (databricks-meta-llama31-70b) 
  3: Databricks - databricks-mixtral-8x7b-instruct (databricks-mixtral8x7b) 
  4: OpenAI - Chat Completions - gpt-4.1-mini (gpt41-mini) 
  5: OpenAI - Chat Completions - gpt-4.1-nano (gpt41-nano) 
  6: OpenAI - Chat Completions - gpt-4.1 (gpt41) 
  7: OpenAI - Chat Completions - gpt-4o (gpt4o) 
  8: Ollama - llama3.2 (ollama) 


  Selection:

Available models

For convenience, chattr contains some provider/model combinations that you can use by passing what is under Use value to chattr_use():

Model & Provider	Use value
DBRX (Databricks)	`databricks-dbrx`
Meta Llama 3.3 70B (Databricks)	`databricks-meta-llama31-70b`
Mixtral 8x7b (Datbricks)	`databricks-mixtral8x7b`
GPT 4.1 Mini (OpenAI)	`gpt41-mini`
GPT 4.1 Nano (OpenAI)	`gpt41-nano`
GPT 4.1 (OpenAI)	`gpt41`
GPT 4 Omni (OpenAI)	`gpt4o`
Llama 3.2 (Ollama)	`ollama`

If the provider and/or model you wish to use is not listed in the table above, you can create an ellmer chat connection directly. And then pass that chat object to chattr_use(). Here is a list of the providers that are currently available in that package:

Anthropic’s Claude: ellmer::chat_anthropic()
AWS Bedrock: ellmer::chat_aws_bedrock()
Azure OpenAI: ellmer::chat_azure_openai()
Cloudflare: ellmer::chat_cloudflare()
Databricks: ellmer::chat_databricks()
DeepSeek: ellmer::chat_deepseek()
GitHub model marketplace: ellmer::chat_github()
Google Gemini/Vertex AI: ellmer::chat_google_gemini()
Groq: ellmer::chat_google_vertex()
Hugging Face: ellmer::chat_groq()
Mistral: ellmer::chat_huggingface()
Ollama: ellmer::chat_mistral()
OpenAI: ellmer::chat_ollama()
OpenRouter: ellmer::chat_openai()
perplexity.ai: ellmer::chat_openrouter()
Snowflake Cortex: ellmer::chat_perplexity()
VLLM: ellmer::chat_snowflake()

The App

The main way to use chattr is through the Shiny Gadget app. By default, in RStudio the app will run inside the Viewer pane.

chattr_use("ollama")
chattr_app()

Screenshot of the Sniny gadget app in a dark mode RStudio theme

After the LLM finishes its response, the chattr app processes all markdown code chunks. It will place three convenience buttons:

Copy to clipboard - It will write the code inside the chunk to your clipboard.
Copy to document - It will copy-paste the code directly to where the app was called from. If the app is started while working on a script, chattr will copy the code to that same script.
Copy to new script - It creates a new R script in the RStudio IDE, and copies the content of the chunk directly to it. Very useful when the LLM writes a Shiny app for you

A lot of effort was put in to make the app’s appearance as close as possible to the IDE. This way it feels more integrated with your work space. This includes switching the color scheme based on the current RStudio theme being light, or dark.

The settings screen can be accessed by clicking on the “gear” button. The screen that opens will contain the following:

Save and Open chats - This is an early experiment to allow us to save and retrieve past chats. chattr will save the file in an RDS format. The main objective of this feature, is to be able to see past chats, not to continue previous conversations with the LLM.
Prompt settings - In this section you can change the additional information attached to your prompt. Including the number of max data files, and data frames sent to the LLM.

Additional ways to interact

Apart from the Shiny app, chattr provides two more ways to interact with the LLM. For details, see: Other interfaces

How it works

chattr enriches your request with additional instructions, name and structure of data frames currently in your environment, the path for the data files in your working directory. If supported by the model, chattr will include the current chat history.

Diagram that illustrates how chattr handles model requests — Diagram that illustrates how `chattr` handles model requests

To see what chattr will send to the model, set the preview argument to TRUE:

library(chattr)

data(mtcars)
data(iris)

chattr_use("gpt4o")
#> 
#> ── chattr
#> • Provider: OpenAI - Chat Completions
#> • Model: gpt-4o
#> • Label: GPT 4 Omni (OpenAI)

chattr(preview = TRUE)
#> 
#> ── chattr ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> 
#> ── Preview for: Console
#> • Provider: OpenAI - Chat Completions
#> • Model: gpt-4o
#> • Label: GPT 4 Omni (OpenAI)
#> • temperature: 0.01
#> • max_tokens: 1000
#> • stream: TRUE
#> 
#> ── Prompt:

Keyboard Shortcut

The best way to access chattr’s app is by setting up a keyboard shortcut for it. This package includes an RStudio Addin that gives us direct access to the app, which in turn, allows a keyboard shortcut to be assigned to the addin. The name of the addin is: “Open Chat”. If you are not familiar with how to assign a keyboard shortcut see the next section.

How to setup the keyboard shortcut

Select Tools in the top menu, and then select Modify Keyboard Shortcuts
Search for the chattr adding by writing “open chat”, in the search box
To select a key combination for your shortcut, click on the Shortcut box and then type press the key combination in your keyboard. In my case, I chose Ctrl+Shift+C