The gander package makes use of a few notable user-facing options.
Choosing models
gander uses the .gander_chat option to configure which model powers the
addin. .gander_chat is an ellmer Chat object.
For example, to use OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini, you might write
Paste that code in your .Rprofile via usethis::edit_r_profile() to
always use the same model every time you start an R session.
The gander package used to use options .gander_fn and .gander_args,
but those are deprecated in favor of .gander_chat.
Style/taste
By default, gander responses use the following style
conventions: "Use tidyverse style and, when relevant, tidyverse packages. For example, when asked to plot something, use ggplot2, or when asked to transform data, using dplyr and/or tidyr unless explicitly instructed otherwise. " Set the .gander_style option to
some other string to tailor responses to your own taste, e.g.:
options(.gander_style = "Use base R.")Paste that code in your
.Rprofile via usethis::edit_r_profile() to always use the same style (or
even always begin with some base set of knowledge about frameworks you
work with often) every time you start an R session.
Data context
By default, gander will show the first 5 rows and 100 columns of every
relevant data frame, allowing for models to pick up on the names, types, and
distributions of the variables it may work with while also keeping the number
of tokens submitted per chat to a minimum. The option .gander_dims allows
you to adjust how many rows and columns to supply to gander addin.
For richer context but increasing token usage, increase the number of rows and columns. For example, to supply the first 50 rows and all columns of datasets supplied to the model, you could use
options(.gander_dims = c(50, Inf)).To decrease token usage, decrease the number of rows and columns, e.g.
options(.gander_dims = c(0, 10))to just show the names and types of the first 10 columns. One could make the argument that setting the number of rows to 0 is privacy-preserving, but do note that the model may pick up on the values of specific cells based on code context alone.
Set that option in your ~/.Rprofile to always use that setting.
Examples
# Running the following will adjust R options, so don't run by default:
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Describe the first 100 rows and every column in relevant data
# frames rather than the first 5 rows and 100 columns (this can
# increase token usage greatly):
options(.gander_dims = c(100, Inf))
# Only describe relevant data frame columns and their types, but don't
# provide any rows:
options(.gander_dims = c(0, Inf))
# Override default tidyverse style to tell the model to prefer another style:
options(.gander_style = "Use base R.")
# Configure gander to use its recommended model, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet
# 3.5. Set this option in your `~/.Rprofile` to always use this setting.
# Note that this requires an `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` envvar:
options(.gander_chat = ellmer::chat_claude())
} # }