frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Data Formulator – interactive AI agents for data analysis (Microsoft)

https://data-formulator.ai/
16•chenglong-hn•3h ago
Hi everyone, we are excited to share with you our new release of Data Formulator. Starting from a dataset, you can communicate with AI agents with UI + natural language to explore data and create visualizations to discover new insights. Here's a demo video of the experience: https://github.com/microsoft/data-formulator/releases/tag/0.....

This is a build-up from our release a year ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41907719). We spent a year exploring how to blend agent mode with interactions to allow you more easily "vibe" with your data but still keeping in control. We don't think the future of data analysis is just "agent to do all for you from a high-level prompt" --- you should still be able to drive the open-ended exploration; but we also don't want you to do everything step-by-step. Thus we worked on this "interactive agent mode" for data analysis with some UI innovations.

Our new demo features:

* We want to let you import (almost) any data easily to get started exploration — either it's a screenshot of a web table, an unnormalized excel table, table in a chunk of text, a csv file, or a table in database, you should be able to load into the tool easily with a little bit of AI assistance.

* We want you to easily choose between agent mode (more automation) vs interactive mode (more fine-grained control) yourself as you explore data. We designed an interface of "data threads": both your and agents' explorations are organized as threads so you can jump into any point to decide how you want to follow-up or revise using UI + NL instruction to provide fine-grained control.

* The results should be easily interpretable. Data Formulator now presents "concept" behind the code generated by AI agents alongside code/explanation/data. Plus, you can compose a report easily based on your visualizations to share insights.

We are sharing the online demo at https://data-formulator.ai/ for you to try! If you want more involvement and customization, checkout our source code https://github.com/microsoft/data-formulator and let's build something together as a community!

Comments

XYZ12334•1h ago
Hyped to use your product in our Mumbai SaaS startup sir!
chenglong-hn•1h ago
Feel free to submit requests in github for any customization needs!
xnx•1h ago
Pretty cool. I like the local install option.

I almost skipped this as more AI wrapper shovelware. Would benefit from putting "Microsoft" in the title.

chenglong-hn•1h ago
That's a good suggestion :)
cadamsdotcom•1h ago
Very cool - a lot of well thought out stuff in there.

One area for exploration is letting people turn natural language questions into non-LLM queries, UIs, & dashboards. In other words to let non-engineers codify their questions into queries they can review for correctness and then take the LLM out of the picture.

Imagine if your CEO could ask natural language questions, build their own dashboard, review the generated queries for correctness, and be able to see deterministic results on any metric they care about - without having to ask an intern and without a multi-hour turnaround while it’s implemented.

Codification is kind of the best of both worlds and the underlying idea (explore with an LLM & then codify into something fast and deterministic when ready) is quite universal.

chenglong-hn•1h ago
That's something we are building! We hope to enhance the report generation as a dashboard builder. Instead of automatically compose an article out of the exploration, we could add more instructions and UI to allow user to specify how different components (vis, data, questions) should be put together to "codify" into a live document to share.

Collaboration sucks

https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/collaboration-sucks
53•Kinrany•34m ago•16 comments

A catalog of side effects

https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/compiler-effects/
39•speckx•1h ago•2 comments

A modern 35mm film scanner for home

https://www.soke.engineering/
35•QiuChuck•1h ago•23 comments

Microplastics: No longer a "maybe"

https://ibbi.io/mp
35•ibbih•37m ago•15 comments

Scaling HNSWs

https://antirez.com/news/156
95•cyndunlop•6h ago•16 comments

Meticulous (YC S21) is hiring to redefine software dev

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/meticulous/3197ae3d-bb26-4750-9ed7-b830f640515e
1•Gabriel_h•1m ago

Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)

https://chadaustin.me/2024/02/windows-terminal-latency/
68•bariumbitmap•2h ago•48 comments

Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

https://pikaday.dbushell.com
61•mnemonet•6h ago•27 comments

We ran over 600 image generations to compare AI image models

https://latenitesoft.com/blog/evaluating-frontier-ai-image-generation-models/
65•kalleboo•3h ago•30 comments

Étude in C minor (2020)

https://zserge.com/posts/etude-in-c/
34•etrvic•6d ago•5 comments

Cache-friendly, low-memory Lanczos algorithm in Rust

https://lukefleed.xyz/posts/cache-friendly-low-memory-lanczos/
82•lukefleed•3h ago•8 comments

My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

https://ellis.codes/blog/my-fan-worked-fine-so-i-gave-it-wi-fi/
19•woolywonder•5d ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cactoide – Federated RSVP Platform

https://cactoide.org/
42•orbanlevi•4h ago•20 comments

Xortran - A PDP-11 Neural Network With Backpropagation in Fortran IV

https://github.com/dbrll/Xortran
7•rahen•51m ago•1 comments

iPhone Pocket

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/introducing-iphone-pocket-a-beautiful-way-to-wear-and-carr...
360•soheilpro•10h ago•933 comments

The R47: A new physical RPN calculator

https://www.swissmicros.com/product/model-r47
134•dm319•4d ago•74 comments

FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

https://thenewstack.io/ffmpeg-to-google-fund-us-or-stop-sending-bugs/
282•CrankyBear•2h ago•197 comments

Show HN: Creavi Macropad – Built a wireless macropad with a display

https://creavi.tech/blog/creavi-macropad-build-log/
17•cmpx•2h ago•6 comments

How I fell in love with Erlang

https://boragonul.com/post/falling-in-love-with-erlang
332•asabil•1w ago•196 comments

Show HN: Data Formulator – interactive AI agents for data analysis (Microsoft)

https://data-formulator.ai/
16•chenglong-hn•3h ago•7 comments

Firefox expands fingerprint protections

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/fingerprinting-protections/
196•ptrhvns•4h ago•114 comments

The history of Casio watches

https://www.casio.com/us/watches/50th/Heritage/1970s/
82•qainsights•2d ago•51 comments

The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

https://steveblank.com/2025/11/11/the-department-of-war-just-shot-the-accountants-and-opted-for-s...
27•ridruejo•6h ago•30 comments

Drawing Text Isn't Simple: Benchmarking Console vs. Graphical Rendering

https://cv.co.hu/csabi/drawing-text-performance-graphical-vs-console.html
43•PaulHoule•6h ago•31 comments

Grebedoc – static site hosting for Git forges

https://grebedoc.dev
30•todsacerdoti•5h ago•4 comments

Advent of Code on the Z-Machine

https://entropicthoughts.com/advent-of-code-on-z-machine
88•todsacerdoti•9h ago•18 comments

The Perplexing Appeal of the Telepathy Tapes

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/12-books/paradigm-shifted-the-perplexing-appeal-of-the-telepathy-t...
51•surprisetalk•7h ago•53 comments

Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

https://markusstrasser.org/creative-work-landscapes.html
120•eatitraw•12h ago•98 comments

Array Programming the Mandelbrot Set

https://jcmorrow.com/mandelbrot/
30•jcmorrow•4d ago•3 comments

The 'Toy Story' You Remember

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-toy-story-you-remember
1074•ani_obsessive•17h ago•299 comments