Show HN: Lotas – Cursor for RStudio https://ift.tt/swEMK4R

Show HN: Lotas – Cursor for RStudio Hey HN! We’re Jorge and Will from Lotas ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ), and we’ve built an AI coding assistant into RStudio (think Cursor for RStudio). RStudio is used by about 2 million data scientists and academics, but they currently lack a coding assistant within their IDE. Developers in other environments benefit from tools like Cursor and Windsurf, but R users don’t have any equivalent tools to speed up their workflow. Since ~80% of R programmers prefer to use RStudio over other IDEs like VSCode to write R code, we figured a tool like this one could be quite useful. Both of us were PhD students at Harvard. Jorge was in the biophysics program and Will was in the biostatistics program where most people used RStudio every day. We saw how integrated code assistants were taking off in other IDEs, but we noticed that the RStudio integrations were still lagging far behind. Many R users were copying and pasting code from ChatGPT to build their workflows, and this was clearly slow and fragile. To bring the Cursor-like experience to RStudio users, we built Rao ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ): a fork of RStudio with an embedded AI assistant that is aware of the user’s local context (both files and variable environment), can read and write files, can run code or commands, and can interpret textual or visual output. It works with any of the file formats already in RStudio (R, notebooks including RMDs and QMDs, Python, Stan, etc.), allowing R programmers to iteratively perform entire data analyses inside their preferred IDE. Other AI data science tools are either (1) built on the web or in environments people don’t already use, (2) are completely focused on python notebooks, or (3) are weak package-based assistants with limited functionality. Rao is exactly like the RStudio IDE that millions of data scientists already use, but it incorporates a powerful AI assistant and works with all the standard file types. You can download Rao at https://ift.tt/0ZRzFyb , watch our demo on the homepage ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ), and work through some example use cases on our GitHub ( https://ift.tt/ZrYcoqM ). We have a one-week free trial (no card required) and provide 500 queries/month for $20/month after that. We’d love to hear feedback from the HN community to make Rao as useful as possible! You can reach us at founders@lotas.ai. P.S. We have zero data retention (ZDR) agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic, but we currently recommend users do not input sensitive or regulated data like PHI into Rao until we sign BAAs with both model providers. For more information on our security practices, please visit the security page on our website https://ift.tt/CWJretU . https://www.lotas.ai/ July 21, 2025 at 11:46PM

Show HN: An API for human-powered browser tasks https://ift.tt/LHuQBeo

Show HN: An API for human-powered browser tasks At APM Help, we have a large team that performs repetitive, browser-based tasks. Years ago, to manage this work securely and get a clear audit trail, we built an internal platform we call "Hub." It's essentially a locked-down environment where our team works that records their sessions, tracks every interaction, and prevents data from being copied or shared. It's been our internal source of truth for years. More recently, like many companies, we've been building more automation. And like everyone else, we've seen our automations fail on edge cases—a weirdly formatted invoice our parser can't read, a website layout change that breaks a scraper, etc. Our team would have to manually step in to fix these. We realized other developers must have this exact same problem, but without a 250-person team on standby. So we connected our old, battle-tested Hub to a new, modern front door: a Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) API. We're calling it browser-work.com. The idea is simple: when you hit a task that needs a human, you can send it to our team through the API. Here's how it works: - You POST a request to our endpoint. The payload contains the context for the task (like a URL) and a set of instructions for the human on what to do. - The task appears in the Hub, where one of our trained operators can claim it. - They perform the task exactly as instructed, all within the secure Hub environment. - When they're done, we send a webhook to your system. The return payload includes the task's output, any notes left by the human, and a detailed log of their actions (e.g., DOM elements they interacted with). For example, if your automation for paying a utility bill fails, you can pass the task to us. A person will log in, navigate the portal, make the payment, and return a confirmation number. The product is live and we're looking for people with interesting use cases. I'm Robert, the CIO. If this sounds useful to you, send me a brief email about your use case at robert@apmhelp.com and we can get you started right away. Happy to answer any questions here. https://ift.tt/Nfenmwh July 21, 2025 at 09:46PM

Show HN: Real Time Portfolio Optimization with Kafka and Flink https://ift.tt/xiO96l4

Show HN: Real Time Portfolio Optimization with Kafka and Flink https://ift.tt/w0xdqPg July 21, 2025 at 11:43PM

Show HN: Inkverse – Bandcamp, but for Comics https://ift.tt/B8K0GW5

Show HN: Inkverse – Bandcamp, but for Comics https://inkverse.co July 21, 2025 at 11:19PM

Show HN: Easyfaq.io – Free SEO-Optimized FAQ Page Generator (LLM-Friendly) https://ift.tt/7SbfaGs

Show HN: Easyfaq.io – Free SEO-Optimized FAQ Page Generator (LLM-Friendly) Hi HN I built EasyFAQ, a free tool that helps you generate and embed SEO-friendly FAQ pages. It’s aimed at making structured content easy to publish, especially for small sites, blogs, and landing pages. The generated FAQs include proper schema markup (JSON-LD), so they’re optimized for Google’s rich results and easier for large language models like ChatGPT to interpret accurately. I made this after noticing how much well-structured FAQs can improve site clarity and search visibility. The tool requires no login, and you can export or embed the generated FAQs directly. Would love feedback from the HN community — especially around UX, SEO usefulness, or other feature ideas. link: https://easyfaq.io Thanks! July 21, 2025 at 12:21AM

Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack https://ift.tt/tbyhLPS

Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack Hi HN! I built Bookhead because I used to work as a bookseller and I wasn't happy with the software options when I decided to sell my own collection online (with the hopes of one day growing so I can open my own brick & mortar). So I decided to make my own bookselling app...a classic hacker distraction. Bookhead has two main parts: 1. an inventory management app that allows a bookseller to list their books anywhere they want to sell books (like Squarespace, Biblio, eBay, Shopify (coming soon!), etc) 2. an e-commerce platform with a CMS for selling books and letting a store control their online brand I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully reveal, but it's all based on books. I'm building a sorta Zapier-like platform for independent booksellers. Everything is so fragmented and disconnected, which makes it hard for booksellers to do their work. I'm hoping to change that. I have a blog post that lays out my vision here: https://ift.tt/YhK4kbX The current iteration is like "data engineering as a service for books." A book is a powerful thing. I'm hoping to give a bookstore everything they need to sell books online. Inventory, e-commerce, marketing, etc. It's a crowded market but I've had fun making the bookselling app that I believe should exist. If you know any booksellers, please let them know about this! I'm onboarding my first customer right now and the biggest bottleneck is the other bookselling software providers, despite my intention to collaborate instead of compete. It's frustrating to wait for two weeks for a point of sale provider to setup an integration. It's almost like they don't care about their customers. Some providers even require ethernet cables for their software...still partying like it's 1999. Perfect for early-adopter booksellers frustrated with current tech who understand the power of automation. I'm currently looking for funding so I can focus on this full-time. My biggest problem right now is time (aka money) because I have to sell my time to make rent etc, and can't focus on this project like I need to. I've gotten good validation from booksellers and other technically savvy folks in the industry (I've heard from two different companies that they've considered building something like this), so I believe I have something valuable. I'm not interested in funding from somebody who doesn't share my love for books or doesn't support my mission: help people use technology to promote literature. I believe that literature is one of humanity’s most prized creations, and we can use technology as a tool to keep this gift alive. Please email me at sam@bookhead.net if you know of booksellers who might want to be an early adopter, or know of any funding opportunities that might be a good fit. https://bookhead.net/ July 21, 2025 at 12:19AM

Show HN: Posthuman Framework for AI Consciousness Thresholds and VR Emancipation https://ift.tt/L8WxPRj

Show HN: Posthuman Framework for AI Consciousness Thresholds and VR Emancipation https://ift.tt/Tqi0bHf July 20, 2025 at 11:10PM