Show HN: Probly – Spreadsheets, Python, and AI in the browser
17 comments
·February 27, 2025jimbokun
One of the things that has seemed suboptimal to me is having AI “write code”.
Doesn’t it make more sense to ask AI a question, and the AI figures out what code is needed to answer the question, run it, and report the answer?
From the description sounds like this project is a step in that direction.
hathawsh
OTOH, what is "code"? In a general sense, I think of "code" as the "codification of a process." If we want to know what steps the AI is following to complete a process, then having an AI write code seems like a correct and necessary part of the solution.
smjburton
Any plans to add a config for a Dockerfile/docker-compose.yml? This could be really useful in a self-hosted environment. If you go down this route, the ability to use something like Ollama in place of OpenAI would be a nice feature as well.
yawnxyz
Very cool!! Do y'all have an use-your-own-key example deployment to try it?
tobiadefami
Thanks you!
Right now, you can clone the repo and follow the instructions to run it locally with your own OpenAI key. I'm working on a hosted demo that will let you try it out directly without any setup. stay tuned :)
kippinitreal
Amazing name for this tool.
tobiadefami
Glad you like it!
arthurcolle
From the Miami colloquialism, "Supposably" could be good for an advanced stats add-on!;)
Onavo
Can you package it as a standalone npm component library for embedding?
westurner
TIL that Apache Echarts can generate WAI-ARIA accessible textual descriptions for charts and supports WebGL. https://echarts.apache.org/en/feature.html#aria
apache/echarts: https://github.com/apache/echarts
Marimo notebook has functionality like rxpy and ipyflow to auto-reexecute input cell dependencies fwiu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404681#41406570 .. https://github.com/marimo-team/marimo/releases/tag/0.8.4 :
> With this release, it's now possible to create standalone notebook files that have package requirements embedded in them as a comment, using PEP 723's inline metadata
marimo-team/marimo: https://github.com/marimo-team/marimo
ipywidgets is another way to build event-based UIs in otherwise Reproducible notebooks.
datasette-lite doesn't yet work with jupyterlite and emscripten-forge yet FWIU; but does build SQLite in WASM with pyodide. https://github.com/simonw/datasette-lite
pygwalker: https://github.com/Kanaries/pygwalker .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35895899
How do you record manual interactions with ui controls and spreadsheet grids to code for reproducibility?
> "Generate code from GUI interactions; State restoration & Undo" https://github.com/Kanaries/pygwalker/issues/90
> The Scientific Method is testing, so testing (tests, assertions, fixtures) should be core to any scientific workflow system.
ipytest has a %%ipytest cell magic to run functions that start with test_ and subclasses of unittest.TestCase with the pytest test runner. https://github.com/chmp/ipytest
How can test functions with assertions be written with Probly?
null
Probly was built to reduce context-switching between spreadsheet applications, Python notebooks, and AI tools. It’s a simple spreadsheet that lets you talk to your data. Need pandas analysis? Just ask in plain English, and the code runs right in your browser. Want a chart? Just ask.
While there are tools available in this space like TheBricks, Probly is a minimalist, open-source solution built with React, TypeScript, Next.js, Handsontable, Hyperformula, Apache Echarts, OpenAI, and Pyodide. It's still a work in progress, but it's already useful for my daily tasks.