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Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

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Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#131

Post by albert_e »

pwarner wrote: post #28
cpard wrote: post #26

There’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.

When I first saw Claude generating PPT decks by writing Python code instead of making the XML directly, it was sort of an "aha moment" for me. This seems to be the path for many things. It also feels slightly limiting, and like a hack LONG term, but 100% correct approach for a while.

Do we have more details / documentation on this capability. Can we replicate the same using a generic agent skill with custom apps / harness.

I think I saw some library named pptxjs? in the thinking traces of Claude. Or was it this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pptxgenjs

Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#132

Post by cheesecakegood »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #97
pwarner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first saw Claude generating PPT decks by writing Python code instead of making the XML directly, it was sort of an "aha moment" for me. This seems to be the path for many things. It also feels slightly limiting, and like a hack LONG term, but 100% correct approach for a while.

Have you seen marp? https://marp.app/

Another somewhat similar concept is how you can write Quarto markdown notebooks and have them output a RevealJS slideshow

Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#134

Post by chenglong-hn »

natch wrote: post #111

Since it isn’t mentioned on the page, I’ll mention that accessibility is a really important thing to design in when creating data visualizations. This podcast (I only have a spotify link) has a really good short interview on this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/18dHTAxCCeIaLOTch6tRld The interview is with Frank Elavsky who seems to be a rock star in the field (and no, I don’t know him and am not him) and made a pro…

Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I do think we will need to work on accessibility support in Flint, this is a perfect place to centrally handle accessibility issues.

I added an issue to track this

https://github.com/microsoft/flint-chart/issues/48

Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#135

Post by chenglong-hn »

efromvt wrote: post #129

Second comment, having read in more depth (really love the auto-layout detail!) - the spec doesn't seem to naturally support layering (which is useful in some multi-axis automatic cases) - any plans for composability?

We made an intentional decision to make it non-compositional for now, and we are using chart-type based approach to handle more expressive charts. (e.g., CDF charts)

But! We have a new project coming in to work on annotation machanism and interactivity to make it supporting presentation tasks.

Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#136

Post by chenglong-hn »

RandyRanderson wrote: post #122

Expressing charts in XML, JSON, etc is a terrible idea. There are several existing examples of this. Ppl who think this is a good idea should be compelled to maintain some M4 or other configuration "files". These configuration files ALWAYS devolve into a full language if they are actually used. So now you have the language you wrote your app in and then you have another, shittier language for your configs ... that yo…

This is a formal language that compiler can take! The natural language and clarify loop helps the LLM to generate Flint spec that can render.

Re: Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents

#137

Post by chenglong-hn »

aitor1717 wrote: post #115

I love this. I'm trying not to go down yet another rabbit hole, but I really want to be able to tell claude code to make a visualization 'like this but just the way you know I like it'. I'm seeing more attempts at standardizing how AI displays data via presets. It's practical, I guess, and hopefully it will make things less error-prone.

We struggled the same, especially when deploying an agent to end users, they are even more frustrated with any mistakes from agents than us!
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