sketch VS backstage

We've made a lot of data tooling things based on LLMs, and are in the process of rebranding and launching our main product.

1. sketch (in notebook, ai for pandas) https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

2. datadm (open source, "chat with data", with support for the open source LLMs (https://github.com/approximatelabs/datadm)

3. Our main product: julyp. https://julyp.com/ (currently under very active rebrand and cleanup) -- but a "chat with data" style app, with a lot of specialized features. I'm also streaming me using it (and sometimes building it) every weekday on twitch to solve misc data problems (https://www.twitch.tv/bluecoconut)

For your next question, about the stack and deploy:

This morning I added a "Related Projects" [3] Section to the Buckaroo docs. If Buckaroo doesn't solve your problem, look at one of the other linked projects (like Mito).

[1] https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

[2] https://github.com/paddymul/buckaroo

[3] https://buckaroo-data.readthedocs.io/en/latest/FAQ.html

For GPT/Copilot style help for pandas, in notebooks REPL flow (without needing to install plugins), I built sketch. I genuinely use it every-time I'm working on pandas dataframes for a quick one-off analysis. Just makes the iteration loop so much faster. (Specifically the `.sketch.howto`, anecdotally I actually don't use `.sketch.ask` anymore)

https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

https://github.com/approximatelabs/lambdaprompt It has served all of my personal use-cases since making it, including powering `sketch` (copilot for pandas) https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

Core things it does: Uses jinja templates, does sync and async, and most importantly treats LLM completion endpoints as "function calls", which you can compose and build structures around just with simple python. I also combined it with fastapi so you can just serve up any templates you want directly as rest endpoints. It also offers callback hooks so you can log & trace execution graphs.

All together its only ~600 lines of python.

I haven't had a chance to really push all the different examples out there, but most "complex behaviors", so there aren't many patterns to copy. But if you're comfortable in python, then I think it offers a pretty good interface.

I hope to get back to it sometime in the next week to introduce local-mode (eg. all the open source smaller models are now available, I want to make those first-class)

Please look at sketch and langchain pandas/SQL plugins. I have seen excellent results with both of these approaches. Both of these approaches will require you to send metadata to openAI.

👉 Understand your data through questions 👉 Create code from plain text Quick Read: https://www.marktechpost.com/2023/02/01/meet-sketch-an-ai-code-writing-assistant-for-pandas/ Github: https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

(3) Asking for re-writes of failed queries (happens occasionally) also helps

The main challenge I think with a lot of these "look it works" tools for data applications, is how do you get an interface that actually will be easy to adopt. The chat-bot style shown here (discord and slack integration) I can see being really valuable, as I believe there has been some traction with these style integrations with data catalog systems recently. People like to ask data questions to other people in slack, adding a bot that tries to answer might short-circuit a lot of this!

We built a prototype where we applied similar techniques to the pandas-code-writing part of the stack, trying to help keep data scientists / data analysts "in flow", integrating the code answers in notebooks (similar to how co-pilot puts suggestions in-line) -- and released https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch a little while ago.

Python AI Helper https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

apiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3 # https://backstage.io/docs/features/software-catalog/descriptor-format#kind-template kind: Template metadata: name: sample-btpsubaccount-remote-template title: Remote Template for SAP BTP Subaccount Setup description: A remote template that creates a basic SAP BTP Subaccount setup tags: - sap - btp - basic - javascript spec: owner: user:guest type: service

Backstage is an open-source platform developed by Spotify for managing the entire lifecycle of developer infrastructure, including services, APIs, documentation, and more. Backstage streamlines the development process through its centralized and customizable platform, offering a unified dashboard that consolidates information on projects, services, and infrastructure. Acting as a service catalog enhances transparency by allowing teams to document and discover internal services easily. Backstage's extensible architecture supports a robust plugin ecosystem, enabling teams to tailor the platform to their specific workflows and preferences. The platform promotes collaboration, accelerates onboarding through standardized documentation, and integrates seamlessly with various DevOps tools.

It’s also well understood that having a k8s cluster is not enough to make developers able to host their services - you need a devops team to work with them, using tools like delivery pipelines, Helm, kustomize, infra as code, service mesh, ingress, secrets management, key management - the list goes on! Developer Portals like Backstage, Port and Cortex have started to emerge to help manage some of this complexity.

We use Confluence and markdown files in GitHub. I think we are moving a lot of our docs to Backstage [0] soon.

One process that ends up being really valuable for documentation purposes is our "Architecture Review Documents". This is a standard document that team leads fill out before starting work on a new Saga/Epic/Feature/whatever. It includes the scope and business value of a new feature or large block of work, high level technical architecture of implementation, the impact on existing database schemas and service APIs, etc. This document is presented in a meeting with technical leadership in our organization who deep dive on the topic and explore potential pitfalls in the plan.

The document and recording of that meeting live on forever, and this information is very useful when getting acquainted with a certain part of our product/codebase. You are able to read and hear clearly the intention of a certain service or module, and you can identify several relevant points of contact to ask questions to.

[0] https://backstage.io/

Check the Backstage repo on GitHub

Backstage - An open platform for building developer portals. [Internal Developer Portal]

So you've just bought a new platform tool? Maybe it's Hashicorp Vault? Snyk? Backstage? You’re excited about all of the developer experience, security and other benefits you're about to unleash on your company—right? But wait…

The idea is to have a central point where people can find standards, documentation, and designs. The team can do this with a specialized tool like Backstage, Confluence, Github, Google Docs, or some internal implementation. The software is not the most important thing here, but having an easy way to find what is needed for the person to be more productive.