Simon Willison’s Showboat Ecosystem Expands with Chartroom and Remote Publishing
Showboat
Claude Code
Remote Publishing
Datasette
CLI Tool
Chartroom
Web Automation
8
Agent Empowerment
Media Hype
6/10
Real Impact
8/10
What is the Viqus Verdict?
We evaluate each news story based on its real impact versus its media hype to offer a clear and objective perspective.
AI Analysis:
While the initial release of Showboat generated moderate buzz, this expansion of its functionality – combining data visualization and remote publishing – dramatically increases its potential real-world impact, moving beyond a niche tool to a more broadly applicable agent-building platform.
Article Summary
Simon Willison, the creator of the Showboat CLI tool for agents to generate Markdown documents, has unveiled two key additions to the ecosystem: Chartroom and the remote publishing feature. Chartroom is a CLI charting tool built around the popular `matplotlib` library, enabling agents to easily incorporate charts directly into Showboat documents. This is particularly useful for agents performing data analysis tasks, allowing them to present findings visually within a generated Markdown document. The remote publishing feature, introduced in Showboat v0.6.0, addresses a key limitation of the original tool – the inability to see documents until they were fully committed. Now, Showboat can push document fragments to a Datasette instance in real-time, allowing for immediate feedback and iteration with Claude Code or Codex. The feature is configured via an environment variable, making it simple to enable. These additions streamline workflows for agents involved in data exploration, documentation, and report generation, significantly enhancing Showboat's utility as a tool for building intelligent, agent-driven systems. The combination of Chartroom and remote publishing provides a robust framework for automating the creation of visually rich documentation and insights.Key Points
- Showboat now includes Chartroom, a CLI charting tool utilizing `matplotlib` for generating charts within documents.
- The new remote publishing feature allows Showboat to incrementally push document fragments to a Datasette instance, enabling real-time feedback and iteration.
- These additions significantly enhance Showboat's utility as a tool for building intelligent, agent-driven systems.