Positron
This page (and website) documents Posit Assistant, which is distinct from Positron Assistant. Posit Assistant is an evolution of Positron Assistant and replaces Positron Assistant as of Positron 2026.07.
Posit Assistant comes pre-installed in recent versions of Positron.
1. Ensure Posit Assistant is Enabled
Positron enables Posit Assistant by default in 2026.07 and later. If you turn it off, set assistant.enabled to true in your settings.json (Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P, then Open User Settings (JSON)). If your administrator has locked this setting via policy, contact them to change it.
On Positron versions older than 2026.07, Posit Assistant is opt-in: set both assistant.enabled to true and positron.assistant.enable to true in your settings to enable it.
2. Configure a Model Provider
You need at least one model provider to use Posit Assistant, and Positron supports many of them. Set up the ones that fit your workflow. Posit AI is a managed service from Posit that gives you access to frontier LLMs through a single account, and the easiest way to get started.
Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P) and run Configure Language Model Providers to sign in or enter credentials for any provider. See Get Started in the Positron documentation for the full walkthrough, or AI Providers for the full list and details on each.
3. Start a Conversation
Click the Posit Assistant icon in the activity bar (or run Open Posit Assistant in Editor Panel from the Command Palette), enter a question, and press Enter.
Further Configuration
See Positron Settings for model routing, experimental features, and other Positron-specific options.