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Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#32There’s an emerging pattern in agentic systems and this project is a great example. A deterministic layer like a compiler or generator of code with some kind of IR that the LLM generates and feeds it with. I feel we will be seeing this more and more in the near future.
A well designed intermediary enables both validation and control over the output independent of the AI. This changes the interaction model between human and AI from delegation to collaboration.
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#33[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#34Is there a specific explanation about how this is better or different than vega itself? https://vega.github.io/vega/docs/specification/ My understanding is that Vega was already an expressive DSL for visualizations and its probably already well spread through LLM training data.
Vega was a high-level language in the past for human, but now they can be a bit too low-level for AI agents! AI agents have to write a lot of low-level params just to make charts looking good, and the result is that programs are hard to write reliably for AI agents. Flint is a higher-level abstraction, with simpler much shorter spec, and the compiler derives low-level decisions so that charts are looking good. So: fl…
I'm sorry, but as someone who creates data visualisation as a big part of my job, I wouldn't say the charts on the website look good. Most aren't awful either, but by no means are they an improvement over what I'd get by telling any coding agent to make a chart with Vega-Lite or Observable Plot, and probably worse than if I had some decent instructions/skills.
I don't quite get what the goal of this is other than abstracting away a little bit of the complexity at the expense of flexibility. To me, the promise of LLMs is the opposite, I can get flexibility and customisation without the cost of complexity.
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#35The charts are very nice, and I think the visualisation layer for LLMs is a very interesting problem. I’ve been building https://smalldocs.org for this exact reason. It’s an office suite for AI agents - but my main use case is giving a cli based LLM the canvas to express itself - charts, mermaid diagrams, etc. I’ve extended it a bit further to be a format for all types of work so the agent can embed slides and spread…
interesting how you don't discuss literally anything about the project actually posted and spam your thing. Not pointing you out, seen many other comments like this on HN but always felt a bit weird about them
Fair point. Sorry
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#36"For AI agents". I understand why everything needs to be marketed in this way, but it's just ... an easy-to-generate language for expressing charts. That's impressive! That's useful.
Isn't this literally made for AI agents to be accessed through an MCP server? Seems to me the AI agents part of the marketing is important.
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#37> simple chart specs can be reliable, but generated charts are often of low quality due to reliance on system defaults; - complex chart specs with explicit details can produce good-looking charts, but they are verbose and agents can struggle with reliability N of only a few of us working on an analytics agent, I don't think we've been finding this to be the case. We've been impressed with just how good LLMs (even sma…
we are considering also reliability, interactivity besides expressiveness. Simpler spec with good expressiveness comes handy when you want the agent to be reliably for non-expert users and with small models.
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vega was a high-level language in the past for human, but now they can be a bit too low-level for AI agents! AI agents have to write a lot of low-level params just to make charts looking good, and the result is that programs are hard to write reliably for AI agents. Flint is a higher-level abstraction, with simpler much shorter spec, and the compiler derives low-level decisions so that charts are looking good. So: fl…
I'm sorry, but as someone who creates data visualisation as a big part of my job, I wouldn't say the charts on the website look good. Most aren't awful either, but by no means are they an improvement over what I'd get by telling any coding agent to make a chart with Vega-Lite or Observable Plot, and probably worse than if I had some decent instructions/skills. I don't quite get what the goal of this is other than abs…
Some composite charts are quite annoying to be generated well (like bullet, waterfall etc), their Vega-Lite equivalent can be quite long if just starting from scratch.
The intention here is that Flint is a simpler abstraction to get basic setups right and any followup edits can be done on top of the first compiled outputs (thus not limiting expressiveness). It also makes it easier for user to manipulate (like swapping axes, click to change something, which can be very hard if LLM generates a complex chart spec upfront).
But for many basic stuff your intuition is completely right.
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#39"For AI agents". I understand why everything needs to be marketed in this way, but it's just ... an easy-to-generate language for expressing charts. That's impressive! That's useful.
for agent to generate, but also easy for human to edit (especially with UI) :)
Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
#40I don't really understand the point of this, I feel like LLMs have been able to one-shot matplotlib since GPT 3.5. I have extensively used LLMs to do data viz and haven't run into any problems. What is a specific instance where an agent struggles to generate a visualization and Flint solves it?