What’s New in R: January 5, 2026
Welcome to this week’s edition of What’s New in R! This week, we’re featuring a deep dive into AI privacy when using LLMs, a comprehensive demo of AI features in Positron, and a guide to configuring your editor for Quarto development. Let’s dive in!
Privacy and AI Assistants
Data privacy is a top concern for many when adopting AI tools, especially when working with sensitive information. In this post, Simon Couch and Sara Altman from Posit address these concerns head-on, explaining how tools like Positron Assistant and the {ellmer} package handle your data. They provide a clear overview of how data flows between your environment and LLM providers, what gets shared (and what doesn’t), and how to configure these tools to align with your organization’s privacy requirements.
Positron AI Session from posit::conf
George Stagg, Winston Chang, and Tomasz Kalinowski deliver a walkthrough of the AI capabilities built into Positron, Posit’s new data science IDE. Recorded at posit::conf(2025), this demo showcases practical ways to use the Positron Assistant for tasks like debugging code, generating visualizations, and even creating entire Quarto reports. It also introduces Databot, an experimental agent for exploratory data analysis, demonstrating how these tools can accelerate your workflow while keeping you in the driver’s seat.
Optimising VS Code and Positron for Quarto: Essential Settings for Better Editing
Mickaël Canouil provides a helpful guide on optimizing your development environment for working with Quarto, covering both Positron and VS Code. The post details recommended settings and extensions to enhance your productivity, including configuration for the Quarto extension, editor behavior, and more. Whether you’re new to these editors or looking to refine your setup, this resource offers practical tips to make your Quarto authoring experience smoother and more efficient.
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Got any ideas for resources I should feature in future issues of What’s New in R? Leave a comment below!
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