Positron Notebook Editor
The Positron Notebook Editor is currently in public alpha. We are actively working on improving the Notebook experience in Positron and want to hear from you! Share your thoughts on this Github discussion or schedule a call with our product and engineering team.
The Positron Notebook Editor provides a familiar notebook experience for Jupyter (.ipynb) files. IDE features work out of the box in notebooks, including AI assistance, data exploration, and debugging.
Key features
- Batteries-included experience: No extensions required for core features
- Improved user experience: Optimized for data science workflows
- Notebook-aware AI assistance: AI understands your notebook context, execution history, and execution order
- Integrated data exploration: Variables Pane and Data Explorer work seamlessly
- Debugging: Works out of the box without additional setup
Enable the Positron Notebook Editor
To make the Positron Notebook Editor the default Jupyter Notebook editor, enable the positron.notebook.enabled setting.
Getting started
You can create and edit .ipynb files in Positron just as you would in other editors. To learn how to use the Positron Notebook Editor, check out our demo notebook.
Notebook layout
For the best experience, open the Command Palette with and run the View: Notebook Layout command. This layout arranges the IDE panes into a notebook friendly setup, giving you quick access to your variables, plots, and other data science tools alongside your notebook.
To learn more about customizing the Positron interface, read the Layout documentation.
Setting up your environment
Positron comes bundled with Jupyter kernel support for R and Python. Once you’ve configured a Python or R environment for Positron, you do not need to install any additional dependencies into your environment before using a notebook.
If an environment installed on your computer isn’t available in Positron, you may want to read more about how Positron discovers Python installations and R installations.
Selecting a notebook kernel
When you first open a Jupyter Notebook, Positron will automatically select an interpreter based on the notebook’s language, the current workspace, and your configuration. The interpreter used by the notebook is visible in the Kernel Selector in the notebook editor action bar.
We recommend matching the notebook interpreter to the active interpreter of the IDE, however, they can be controlled separately. See Managing Interpreters to learn more.
You can manually select a different interpreter for the notebook by selecting the Kernel Selector in the notebook editor action bar. The Change Kernel… option will display a list of all the registered interpreters. Select an interpreter from the list.
Alternatively, you can run the Positron Notebook: Change Kernel… command from the Command Palette.
Customization
To set the default working directory for a notebook, use the notebook.workingDirectory setting.
Positron Assistant integration
The Positron Notebook Editor integrates with Positron Assistant to provide notebook-aware AI assistance:
- Context-Aware: Assistant has access to rich context about your notebook, including cell states, execution history, code and outputs including images and tables.
- Dynamic Suggestions: Assistant follows your work and dynamically suggests actions to improve your notebook.
- Actionable Editing: With your permission, Assistant can directly edit and run cells in your notebook.
- Transparent: You can inspect and control the specific context the Assistant is using.
- Collaborative: Use Follow Assistant to automatically scroll and highlight cells as they’re edited
Enable Positron Assistant
To use the integrated notebook AI features, you will need to set up Positron Assistant. See Getting Started with Positron Assistant for setup instructions. Currently, we recommend using Anthropic as a model provider for the best experience.
Once enabled, you will see assistant specific actions in the notebook editor action bar.
Notebook Assistant panel
The Notebook Assistant panel provides a quick way to interact with Assistant directly from your notebook. To open it, click the Assistant icon button in the notebook editor action bar.
From the panel, you can:
- View context: See which cells are included in the Assistant context
- Quick actions: Run common actions like explaining the contents of a notebook or fixing errors in a notebook
- Generate suggestions: View dynamically generated suggestions based on the current state of the notebook
Selecting an option from the panel will open a new Chat Pane with the notebook context already attached.
Follow assistant
When the Assistant is actively editing cells in your notebook, you may want to watch its progress. Click Follow Assistant in the notebook editor action bar to have the notebook automatically scroll to cells as they are edited. This lets you review changes in real-time.