Context-Aware AI Assistant for RStudio • codriver

A context-aware AI assistant for RStudio that is literally at your fingertips.

Codriver works directly in the RStudio source editor, without switching context or opening a separate chat window. When you press the keyboard shortcut, codriver reads your cursor position and selection to choose one of five modes — complete, generate, continue, edit, or comment — and presents suggestions in-place.

📋 Requirements

RStudio ≥ 2026.04
API access to an LLM provider or local model server

✈️ Installation

Run these R commands:

# Install remotes package if necessary
install.packages("remotes")

# Install codriver from GitHub
remotes::install_github("vdwulp/codriver")

⚙️ Configuration

Configure codriver to connect to your LLM provider or local model server:

# OpenAI
codriver::codriver_configure("openai", model = "gpt-4.1")

# Anthropic Claude
codriver::codriver_configure("anthropic", model = "claude-sonnet-4-5")

# OpenAI-compatible endpoint
codriver::codriver_configure("openai_compatible",
  base_url = "https://llmproxy.example.com/v1",
  model    = "gpt-4.1"
)

Codriver builds on ellmer and supports any LLM provider ellmer supports, covering a wide range of cloud and local model servers. For most providers, ellmer reads API credentials from an environment variable, for example OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or GOOGLE_API_KEY. See Getting started for more information on provider configuration.

🚀 Usage

Restart RStudio after configuration for the keyboard shortcut to take effect.

▶️ Invoke codriver — press Ctrl+/ in the RStudio source editor. Codriver takes it from there.

A keyboard shortcut is strongly recommended for the best codriver experience. If you skipped registering the default shortcut Ctrl+/ during configuration or want to change it later, use Tools > Modify Keyboard Shortcuts in RStudio.

Codriver determines the mode from your cursor position and any selection. At a high level:

Mode	Trigger	Action
complete	At end of a code line	Completes the line
generate	On a comment line	Uses the comment as an instruction to generate new code
continue	In whitespace	Generates a new line or block from context only
edit	In existing code	Suggests improvements or fixes
comment	In an inline comment	Suggests or improves a short inline comment

Results appear as ghost text - gray italic, accept with TAB, dismiss by moving the cursor - or as an edit suggestion with green/red highlighting - accept with TAB or Apply, dismiss with Escape or Discard.

See Using codriver for a full walkthrough of all modes and result presentation.

🔒 Data privacy

Codriver sends (parts of) your editor context and session information directly to the LLM provider or model server you configure. There is no intermediary server. Sent information includes metadata about objects in the RStudio global environment (names, named elements, types and dimensions), but not data values. Be aware of this before using Codriver in projects with sensitive or proprietary information.

Please review your provider’s data policy before use.

📄 License

MIT License, see LICENSE file.