Garrick Aden-Buie

What are AI agent skills? How do I use them? | Garrick Aden-Buie | Data Science Lab

The Data Science Lab is a live weekly call. Register at pos.it/dslab! Discord invites go out each week on lives calls. We’d love to have you! The Lab is an open, messy space for learning and asking questions. Think of it like pair coding with a friend or two. Learn something new, and share what you know to help others grow. On this call, Libby Heeren is joined by Garrick Aden-Buie, who walks through what AI agent skills are, how they work, and how to create your own. Garrick explains agent skills by starting with the basics: how we interact with large language models, what system prompts are, and how skills dynamically load instructions when needed. He demonstrates several practical skills, including skills for Shiny development with bslib and a skill that automates pull request creation workflows. Then, live during the session, Garrick creates a new skill from scratch that generates alt text for data visualizations using best practices from accessibility experts. Hosting crew from Posit: Libby Heeren, Isabella Velasquez Garrick Aden-Buie’s GitHub: https://github.com/gadenbuie Garrick Aden-Buie’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/garrickadenbuie.com Garrick Aden-Buie’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrick-aden-buie/ Resources mentioned in the video and chat: Agent Skills website: https://agentskills.io/ Agent Skills directory: https://skills.sh/ Elmer R package for interacting with LLM APIs: https://ellmer.tidyverse.org/ Caveman skill: https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman Posit-dev skills repository: https://github.com/posit-dev/skills Garrick’s ds-lab-agent-skills demo repository: https://github.com/gadenbuie/ds-lab-agent-skills btw R package for connecting R and LLMs: https://posit-dev.github.io/btw/ Christopher Kenny’s Awesome R Skills repo: https://github.com/christopherkenny/awesome-rstats-skills Cat Hicks’ learning opportunities skills: https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-opportunities Amy Cesal’s article on writing alt text for data visualizations: https://medium.com/nightingale/writing-alt-text-for-data-visualization-2a218ef43f81 bslib R package for modern Shiny UI: https://rstudio.github.io/bslib/ ► Subscribe to Our Channel Here: https://bit.ly/2TzgcOu Follow Us Here: Website: https://www.posit.co Hangout: https://pos.it/dsh The Lab: https://pos.it/dslab LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/posit-software Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/posit.co Thanks for hanging out with us! 00:00 Introduction 01:43 “Are skills solely for Claude code or are they applicable in all contexts?” 04:16 Demoing the elmer R package for interacting with large language models 05:13 “What are agent skills?” 06:59 “How do I how do I make a skill?” 07:49 Demoing how to use a system prompt 10:55 Demoing the caveman skill markdown file 14:28 “If I have access to Positron Assistant using GitHub Copilot, does that mean that I can use Elmer without an API key?” 15:46 “Can the instructions be more than just strings? Are there other types of sources like JSON or CSV that can be used to learn other skills?” 18:57 “What are the examples in which you use skills?” 19:37 Demoing the posit skills repository 20:22 Demoing the Shiny BSLib skill 25:19 “Is there anything like that with agents skills so that we can look up the top trending or used skills so that we know what’s already out there?” 25:34 “Wondering what you use to keep up with the latest.” 25:41 Demoing the skills.sh website to find skills 28:00 “Should we really trust these random skills?” 28:22 “What tool do you use to downloadmanage or sync skills from various sources?” 28:44 Demoing how to install skills using npx 30:36 Demoing how to install skills using the BTW R package 31:53 “Is a boundaries section standard for the skills.md file? And what practical implications does that have?” 32:55 “Are skills almost a way to give agents info about topics in a lesser version of using RAG?” 34:57 Demoing the PR create workflow skill 37:38 Demoing building a skill from scratch 41:12 Demoing using slash commands to invoke skills in Claude Code 45:00 “How do LLMs deal with conflicts between skills?” 46:02 “Are you stuck using all skills for each session? Or can you subset which skills you’re using for that session?” 47:00 “Is the default to download them on a per project level?” 47:24 “What is the difference between local and global skills folders? Could you demonstrate that for us really quickly?” 49:58 Demoing the Planetator tool for reviewing files and giving inline feedback 53:28 “Is installing skills from the claude code plug-in marketplace the same thing with installing with npx?” 54:44 “What distinguishes the.claud folder from a.agents folder?” 55:21 “Is it the community practice to let an LLM write the skill with resources fed as opposed to writing it by hand?”

Garrick Aden-Buie

Analyzing a TidyTuesday dataset with Posit Assistant in RStudio | Hadley Wickham | Data Science Lab

The Data Science Lab is a live weekly call. Register at pos.it/dslab! Discord invites go out each week on lives calls. We’d love to have you! The Lab is an open, messy space for learning and asking questions. Think of it like pair coding with a friend or two. Learn something new, and share what you know to help others grow. On this call, Libby Heeren is joined by Hadley Wickham who uses Posit’s new Posit Assistant (not to be confused with Positron Assistant or Databot in Positron) in RStudio to analyze the week’s TidyTuesday dataset. Hosting crew from Posit: Libby Heeren, Isabella Velasquez, Hadley Wickham Hadley’s Blueskey: https://bsky.app/profile/hadley.nz Hadley’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadleywickham/ Hadley’s GitHub: https://github.com/hadley Hadley’s website: https://hadley.nz/ Resources mentioned in the video and chat: Posit AI / Posit Assistant waitlist → https://posit.co/products/ai/ Tidy Tuesday Dataset → https://github.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/blob/main/data/2026/2026-02-17/readme.md#agricultural-production-statistics-in-new-zealand nanoparquet (R package) → https://nanoparquet.r-lib.org/ Databot → https://positron.posit.co/databot.html wbstats (R package for WorldBank API) → https://github.com/gshs-ornl/wbstats World Bank NZ data → https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=NZ Hadley & Joe’s posit::conf talk ft. Hadley’s demo of ggbot2 → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSFHQWGyRzo Wikimedia: New Zealand Total Population → https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data:New_Zealand_Total_Population.tab Posit Conf Talk: James Wade’s “Disposable Shiny Apps” → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smnrmTtoiOM Hadley’s unhinged {genzplyr} (R package) →https://github.com/hadley/genzplyr Simon Couch’s blog post on evaluating LLMs → https://posit.co/blog/python-llm-evaluation/ Garrick Aden-Buie mentioned working on a collection of skills → https://github.com/posit-dev/skills Max Woolf’s blog post “Does Offering ChatGPT a Tip Cause it to Generate Better Text?” → https://minimaxir.com/2024/02/chatgpt-tips-analysis/ Cat Hicks’s skill for coding agents that lets you learn from the agent → https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-opportunities (but also see her great thread on bluesky! https://bsky.app/profile/grimalkina.bsky.social/post/3mevvbm3a6s26) ► Subscribe to Our Channel Here: https://bit.ly/2TzgcOu Follow Us Here: Website: https://www.posit.co Hangout: https://pos.it/dsh The Lab: https://pos.it/dslab LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/posit-software Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/posit.co Thanks for hanging out with us! Timestamps of Questions / Topics 00:00 Introduction 01:17 Posit Assistant and using an agents.md file 02:54 Downloading TidyTuesday data using Posit Assistant 04:38 “Why use Parquet files over CSVs?” 07:11 Oops, switching Hadley’s mic, sorry! 09:27 Creating a visualization of sheep populations 10:28 “When would you switch models to Opus?” 13:28 “Do we have a Gen-Z human in the loop to verify the syntax?” (We did, folks, we did) 13:54 “How many bow ties does Hadley own?” 14:24 Asking the AI to retrieve real New Zealand population data 15:25 “Can the Posit Assistant use voice to text so people don’t have to type…?” 18:40 “What’s the purpose of the agents.md file and what goes in there?” 20:59 “How does posit AI in RStudio compare with the current positron AI assistants?” 22:39 “Will all the code generated by Posit assistant be stored in the session somehow to let somebody review what the agent generated?” 26:08 Having the AI create a Quarto report 26:54 “Does Posit Assistant also support Skills Files?” 27:49 “Were we always able to add agents.md in Positron too?” 28:17 “Did Hadley choose the name agents for agents.md or does each session have an agents file similar to having a README.md?” 29:57 Fixing the AI-chosen plot theme 31:55 “Is any of the stuff that it’s put in the report in Gen-Z speak, or is it only what it’s returning to you in the chat?” 33:24 “Can Posit Assistant create a renv as well?” 35:39 “Is Claude also the best for Python code?” 36:20 “If you add a behavior or a requirement to agents.md, does it take that new info in on the fly as you continue prompting?” 37:40 “What if you ask the agent why something happened?” 40:31 Investigating AI speculations about dairy cattle numbers 41:15 “Do you still need to know how to code in 2026?” 41:42 “Does using caps lock increase the likelihood that the LLM is going to listen to your agents.md file?” 45:47 “Could Hadley have done this faster without an AI?” 47:26 Hadley had AI do text clustering on image descriptions (previous TidyTuesday dataset) 48:41 Hadley had AI make a Shiny app to explore cluster sizes (previous TidyTuesday dataset) 52:53 “If one of the best ways to learn how to read code is to write code, what’s gonna happen if we’re writing it less?” 54:05 Wrap up and Posit AI waitlist information

Garrick Aden-Buie, Hadley Wickham, Simon Couch

Exploring Positron settings | Isabel Zimmerman & Davis Vaughan | Data Science Lab

The Data Science Lab is a live weekly call. Register at pos.it/dslab! Discord invites go out each week on lives calls. We’d love to have you! The Lab is an open, messy space for learning and asking questions. Think of it like pair coding with a friend or two. Learn something new, and share what you know to help others grow. On this call, Libby Heeren is joined by Posit engineers Isabel Zimmerman and Davis Vaughan as they share some of their favorite settings in Positron, a super customizable data science IDE. Come laugh with us as we can’t seem to figure out that VSCode calls rainbow parentheses “bracket pair colorization” Hosting crew from Posit: Libby Heeren, Isabella Velasquez, Daniel Chen, Isabel Zimmerman, Davis Vaughan Resources from the hosts and chat: Install Positron: https://positron.posit.co/ Positron docs on keyboard shortcuts: https://positron.posit.co/keyboard-shortcuts.html Nathan Jeffery’s “click to open a.RDS file” keybinding: https://nathan-jeffery.netlify.app/blog/2025-08-26-read-rds-positron/ Positron R pipe setting (paste in browser and it’ll open in Positron): positron://settings/positron.r.pipe One of Dan Chen’s faves, the native tab feature in VSCode + Positron: https://lucasprag.com/posts/underrated-vscode-feature-native-tabs/ The list of RStudio keybindings that you get when you turn on RStudio keybindings in Positron: https://positron.posit.co/migrate-rstudio-keybindings.html Indent rainbow extension: https://open-vsx.org/extension/oderwat/indent-rainbow Rainbow brackets setting (paste in browser and it’ll open in Positron): positron://settings/editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled Setting hierarchy (User vs Workspace settings) in Positron: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/configure/settings#_settings-precedence Rainbow CSV extension (not by Posit): https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mechatroner.rainbow-csv Positron +1ePositron, an extension pack for dev and data science, by Garrick Aden-Buie: https://open-vsx.org/extension/grrrck/positron-plus-1-e Publishing from VS Code or Positron: https://docs.posit.co/connect/user/publishing-positron-vscode/ Posit Connect Cloud plans: https://connect.posit.cloud/plans Enter Folder extension that Libby mentions: https://open-vsx.org/extension/xiangda/enter-folder Catppuccin themes (shared by Rory Lawless, and now some of Libby’s favorites!): https://open-vsx.org/extension/Catppuccin/catppuccin-vsc ► Subscribe to Our Channel Here: https://bit.ly/2TzgcOu Follow Us Here: Website: https://www.posit.co The Lab: https://pos.it/dslab Hangout: https://pos.it/dsh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/posit-software Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/posit.co Thanks for learning with us! Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 00:42 Guest Introductions: Isabel and Davis 02:41 Positron Settings overview 04:11 How to enable “Format on Save” 04:34 “How do I open settings in JSON or UI?” 05:10 Auto Save on focus change 08:26 Enabling RStudio key bindings 09:28 “Why doesn’t the cursor move with code edits?” 12:18 User vs. Workspace settings 14:34 Creating and using Profiles 16:13 “Can I use the magrittr pipe with Control+Shift+M?” 17:23 Searching and managing keyboard shortcuts 19:42 Creating custom code snippets 21:31 The Indent Rainbow extension 24:04 Enabling rainbow parenthesis/brackets 25:08 Managing Python and R interpreters 26:32 Rearranging and hiding UI panes 28:04 Rainbow CSV and favorite extensions 29:26 Using the Enter Folder extension 31:05 Understanding the setting hierarchy 32:48 Adding symbols to Quick Open search 36:00 “Is there a way to shift focus using keyboard shortcuts?” 38:04 Modifying keybindings JSON for specific languages 39:20 “How do you find trustworthy extensions?” 43:11 “How can I publish to shinyapps.io from Positron?” 44:03 Deploying with Posit Publisher and Connect Cloud 48:32 Customizing themes with RainGlow extension 50:36 “Is there an Import Data Set wizard in Positron?” 53:01 Conclusion and community resources

Davis Vaughan, Garrick Aden-Buie, Isabel Zimmerman

Communicating Data Science with Shiny! 🚀 Garrick Aden-Buie #datascience #datavisualization #shiny

Ever seen this diagram? It’s from R for Data Science, outlining the journey of tackling new data problems. 1️⃣ Start: Import and tidy your data. 2️⃣ Cycle: Transform, visualize, and model your data. 3️⃣ Communicate: Share your findings. But communication isn’t just the end—it’s an ongoing process! Shiny apps are your secret weapon for this. Scenario 1: Quick Shiny app for colleague feedback ️ refine your work. Scenario 2: Small app grows into a full-featured web application. From small, quick-use apps to robust final products, Shiny evolves with your project needs. Discover why Shiny is essential for every data scientist! Get Started: https://shiny.posit.co #positshorts

Garrick Aden-Buie

Rstudio Data Science Machine Learning Python Stats Tidyverse Data Visualization Data Viz Ggplot Technology Coding Connect Server Pro Shiny Rmarkdown Package Manager CRAN Interoperability Serious Data Science Dplyr Forcats Ggplot2 Tibble Readr Stringr Tidyr Purrr GitHub Data Wrangling Tidy Data Odbc Rayshader Plumber Blogdown Gt Lazy Evaluation Tidymodels Statistics Debugging Programming Education RStats Open Source OSS Reticulate

epoxy: Super Glue for Data-driven Reports and Shiny Apps - posit::conf(2023)

Presented by Garrick Aden-Buie R Markdown, Quarto, and Shiny are powerful frameworks that allow authors to create data-driven reports and apps. But truly excellent reports require a lot of work in the final steps to get numerical and stylistic formatting just right. {epoxy} is a new package that uses {glue} to give authors templating superpowers. Epoxy works in R Markdown and Quarto, in markdown, LaTeX, and HTML outputs. It also provides easy templating for Shiny apps for dynamic data-driven reporting. Beyond epoxy’s features, this talk will also touch on tips and approaches for data-driven reporting that will be useful to a wide audience, from R Markdown experts to the Quarto and Shiny curious. Presented at Posit Conference, between Sept 19-20 2023, Learn more at posit.co/conference.# Talk Track: Elevating your reports. Session Code: TALK-1155

Garrick Aden-Buie

Quarto Databricks Data Science Rstudio Machine Learning Python Stats Tidyverse Data Visualization Data Viz Ggplot Technology Coding Connect Shiny Rmarkdown Package Manager CRAN Interoperability Serious Data Science Dplyr Forcats Ggplot2 Tibble Readr Stringr Tidyr Purrr GitHub Data Wrangling Tidy Data Odbc Rayshader Plumber Blogdown Gt Lazy Evaluation Tidymodels Statistics Debugging Programming Education RStats Open Source OSS Quarto Posit Ml

Garrick Aden-Buie | xaringan Playground: Using xaringan to learn web development | RStudio

xaringan is a quirky package that extends R Markdown to create beautiful web-based HTML slides. Some of xaringan’s quirks come from the JavaScript library it uses, remarkjs, and some of it from the unusual naming scheme xaringan uses for its functions. But under this quirky exterior lies a powerful tool for learning and practicing web development, especially when combined with infinite_moon_reader() for immediate feedback. In this talk I’ll cover some basic web concepts that illustrate how fun and rewarding it can to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript while building awesome slides in R Markdown. About Garrick: The workshop will be led by friend of RStudio, Garrick Aden-Buie, R developer and educator and Data Scientist at Moffitt Cancer Center, where he uses Shiny to enable and accelerate cancer research

Garrick Aden-Buie

rstudio Rstudio Data Science Machine Learning Python Stats Tidyverse Data Visualization Data Viz Ggplot Technology Coding Connect Server Pro Shiny Rmarkdown Package Manager CRAN Interoperability Serious Data Science Dplyr Ggplot2 Tibble Readr Stringr Tidyr Purrr GitHub Data Wrangling Tidy Data Odbc Rayshader Plumber Blogdown Gt Lazy Evaluation Tidymodels Statistics Debugging Programming Education Forcats RStats Open Source OSS Reticulate Garrick Aden-Buie Xaringan HTML

Garrick Aden-Buie

Software by Garrick Aden-Buie#

Shiny for R

bslib

btw

skills

querychat

shinychat

ellmer

learnr

flexdashboard

shiny-vscode

shinyloadtest

chromote

gradethis

mcptools

pkgdown

Events attended by Garrick Aden-Buie#

R/Pharma 2025

Posts and resources by Garrick Aden-Buie#

What are AI agent skills? How do I use them? | Garrick Aden-Buie | Data Science Lab

Analyzing a TidyTuesday dataset with Posit Assistant in RStudio | Hadley Wickham | Data Science Lab

Exploring Positron settings | Isabel Zimmerman & Davis Vaughan | Data Science Lab

Tool Calling UI in shinychat

Theming Made Easy: Introducing brand.yml (Garrick Aden-Buie, Posit) | posit::conf(2025)

chromote v0.5.0

bslib v0.9.0 brings branded theming to Shiny for R

Branded theming for Shiny for Python apps

Next Generation Shiny Apps with {bslib}

shinyswatch 0.7.0

Communicating Data Science with Shiny! 🚀 Garrick Aden-Buie #datascience #datavisualization #shiny

Reintroducing the Shiny Extension for VS Code

epoxy: Super Glue for Data-driven Reports and Shiny Apps - posit::conf(2023)

Shiny for R updates: new default look, dark mode, shinylive updates, and more

Shiny for R updates: tooltips, popovers, a new theme, and more

Garrick Aden-Buie | xaringan Playground: Using xaringan to learn web development | RStudio