Breaking Changes

• The entire functional API (i.e., init(), sidebar(), server(), etc) has been hard deprecated in favor of a simpler OOP-based API. Namely, the new QueryChat() class is now the main entry point (instead of init()) and has methods to replace old functions (e.g., .sidebar(), .server(), etc). (#101)

• The .sql() method now returns None instead of "" (empty string) when no query has been set, aligning with the behavior of .title() for consistency. Most code using the or operator or req() for falsy checks will continue working without changes. Code that explicitly checks sql() == "" should be updated to use falsy checks (if not sql()) or explicit null checks (if sql() is None). (#146)

New features

• New QueryChat.app() method enables quicker/easier chatting with a dataset. (#104)

• Enabled bookmarking by default in both .app() and .server() methods. In latter case, you'll need to also specify the bookmark_store (either in shiny.App() or shiny.express.app_opts()) for it to take effect. (#104)

• The current SQL query and title can now be programmatically set through the .sql() and .title() methods of QueryChat(). (#98, #101)

• New querychat.data module provides sample datasets (titanic() and tips()) to make it easier to get started without external dependencies. (#118)

• Added a .generate_greeting() method to help you create a greeting message for your querychat bot. (#87)

• Added querychat_reset_dashboard() tool for easily resetting the dashboard filters when asked by the user. (#81)

Improvements

• Added rich tool UI support using shinychat development version and chatlas >= 0.11.1. (#67)

• querychat's system prompt and tool descriptions were rewritten for clarity and future extensibility. (#90)

• Tool detail cards can now be expanded or collapsed by default when querychat runs a query or updates the dashboard via the QUERYCHAT_TOOL_DETAILS environment variable. Valid values are "expanded", "collapsed", or "default". (#137)

• Fixed another issue with data sources that aren't already narwhals DataFrames (#83)

• Fixed an issue with the query tool when used with SQLAlchemy data sources. (@npelikan #79)

• querychat.init() now accepts a client argument, replacing the previous create_chat_callback argument. (#60)

  The client can be:

  • a chatlas.Chat object,
  • a function that returns a chatlas.Chat object,
  • or a provider-model string, e.g. "openai/gpt-4.1", to be passed to chatlas.ChatAuto().

  If client is not provided, querychat will use the QUERYCHAT_CLIENT environment variable, which should be a provider-model string. If the envvar is not set, querychat uses OpenAI with the default model from chatlas.ChatOpenAI().

• querychat.ui() now adds a .querychat class to the chat container and querychat.sidebar() adds a .querychat-sidebar class to the sidebar, allowing for easier customization via CSS. (#68)