Save and start 'shidashi' apps for AI agents

save_launcher saves how to start a 'shidashi' app, so that an AI agent connected through the MCP proxy can list it and, after asking the user, start it and open one of its modules in the browser. Nothing is started automatically: the agent only launches a saved app when the user picks it.

run_launcher starts a saved app. The MCP proxy calls it when the agent launches an app; it can also be called from R.

Usage

save_launcher(
  id,
  root_path,
  host = "127.0.0.1",
  port = NA,
  modules = NULL,
  description = "",
  prelaunch = NULL,
  copy_app = FALSE,
  ...
)

run_launcher(id, ...)

Arguments

id

a short name for the app, made of letters, digits, "-", and "_". The agent and the user refer to the app by this name.

root_path

the app directory; it must contain modules.yaml

host

the host to listen on

port

the port to listen on; NA picks a free port at launch

modules

the module identifiers the agent may open; default is the modules that have AI agents enabled (an agents.yaml file)

description

a short description shown to the agent

prelaunch

optional R code, as a character string, to run before the app starts

copy_app

whether to start a copy of the app, kept in the cache folder, instead of the app directory itself

...

for save_launcher, named metadata about the app (character, numeric, or logical values), shown to the agent but not used to start the app; for run_launcher, extra arguments passed to render, which override the defaults (launch_browser = FALSE, as_job = FALSE)

Value

save_launcher returns the saved launcher, invisibly. run_launcher runs the app; see render.

Details

All launchers are kept in one file, launchers.json, in the 'shidashi' cache folder (tools::R_user_dir("shidashi", "cache")). Saving again with the same id replaces that launcher. Saving a launcher also installs or updates the MCP proxy script.

With copy_app = TRUE, the app folder is copied to saved_apps/<id>/ in the cache folder (without .git and node_modules), and the launcher starts the copy. The folder is cleared before each copy. Without copy_app, a copy left from an earlier save of the same id is removed.

Examples

# This example saves into a temporary folder; by default launchers are
# saved in the user's cache folder
old_opt <- options(shidashi.cache_dir = tempfile())

root <- system.file("builtin-templates", "bslib-bare", package = "shidashi")
save_launcher(
  "demo-app", root,
  description = "Demo dashboard shipped with shidashi",
  lab = "example"
)

if (interactive()) {
  run_launcher("demo-app", launch_browser = TRUE)
}

options(old_opt)