spyder-ai-chat 0.8.1

OpenAI-compatible AI chat pane + FIM completion for Spyder 6

Spyder IDE AI Chat Plugin

An OpenAI-compatible AI chat panel for Spyder 6.x. Connect to 12 providers — OpenAI, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, Together AI, Fireworks AI, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, or any custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint — all from inside your IDE, without switching windows.

© 2026 Maciej Piecko — MIT License

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What's new in 0.8.1

• run:git agentic fence — the LLM can run git commands via ```run:git fences; orange action block; non-blocking QThread execution with ⏳ spinner; inline output panel with 📎 Add to chat / ✕ Dismiss; git availability checked with a friendly error if git is not on PATH
• Diff syntax highlighting — patch: blocks render with coloured unified-diff highlighting in the chat and confirm dialog; internal patch text is always preserved unchanged
• Robust patch application — fuzzy line-search fallback when LLM omits @@ line numbers, preventing silent no-op patches
• Agentic system prompt — hash-based auto-upgrade removed; replaced with an amber upgrade notice in Settings; Reset to default button always visible above the collapsible prompt textarea; built-in prompt now enforces patch: for edits, file: only for new files
• Full absolute paths in file attachments — manually attached files and project context blocks store and display full absolute paths so the LLM can use them directly in fences
• Wrapping context bar — tag bar wraps to the next row instead of expanding the plugin window; project context toggle stays in a fixed right column
• New-chat project context — starting a new chat always disables project context (configurable in Settings → 📁 Context); enabling project context clears any manually attached files
• Live project root for agentic actions — base directory resolved lazily at click time using the live Spyder project root, even if project context is off; home directory is last-resort only
• .git metadata files in project context — HEAD, config, COMMIT_EDITMSG etc. are now correctly collected when project context is active
• Version shown in Settings — plugin version displayed in Settings → Connection tab

What's new in 0.8.0

• Named chat collections — organise saved chats into user-defined collections (folders inside ~/.spyder_ai_chat/chats/); fully backward-compatible with existing chat files in the Default collection
• Collection selector in history popup — "Collection:" dropdown lets you browse one collection at a time or switch to ⊕ All Collections to search across all collections simultaneously
• Collection Manager dialog — ⚙ gear button opens a side-by-side manager: create, rename, delete collections; move chats between them individually or in bulk; delete dialog lets you choose to delete chats or move them to another collection first
• Right-click "Move to →" — context menu on any chat row lets you move it to another collection; moving the currently open chat updates the panel's active reference live
• Collection badge in All-Collections view — chat rows show a [CollectionName] badge so the source is always visible when browsing all collections
• Auto-complete settings fix — "Context before cursor" field no longer resets to 100 when clicking OK (Qt intermediate-validation bug with minimum=100 was the root cause; lowered to 1)
• Button icon fixes — gear icon in the toolbar now renders in monochrome on Windows instead of coloured emoji

What's new in 0.7.1

• Project Explorer context menu — right-click file(s) in the Project Explorer to add them to the AI Chat context; multi-select supported; disabled automatically when project context is ON
• Editor context menu fix (Spyder 6.1.4) — AI Chat submenu restored after Spyder 6.1.4 changed the editor menu API; backwards-compatible with Spyder ≤ 6.1.3
• Agentic fixes — overwrite header updates live after file creation; patch reloads the open editor buffer; startup chat action blocks (run/overwrite detection) work correctly on first click without requiring a chat switch
• Agentic: Apply patch colour — changed from purple to lime green for better contrast
• Settings: Agentic tab — compact 2-column layout; prompt template collapsible to save vertical space

What's new in 0.7.0

• Agentic mode — enable in Settings → 🤖 Agentic; the LLM can take direct actions via special code fences, each confirmed with a single click:
  • ```file:path — create or overwrite a file; new files open automatically in the Spyder editor
  • ```run:python — send Python code to the active IPython console
  • ```install:pip — install packages via the console
  • ```patch:path — apply a unified diff patch to an existing file
• Agentic settings tab: master switch, per-action allow flags, default base path, customisable prompt template with Reset button
• Overwrite detection — action button shows blue "✓ Create file" or amber "⚠ Overwrite file" depending on whether the target exists
• Done badge — executed actions show ✓ Done; hover reveals ↺ Re-run; execution state persisted across chat reloads
• Regenerate fix — 🔄 Regenerate now correctly injects the agentic system prompt
• Streaming flash fix — eliminated the brief floating widget appearing during action block rendering

What's new in 0.6.0

• Project-wide context — enable the 📁 Proj. Context toggle in the chat bar to attach your entire Spyder project to the conversation:
  • Folder-selection dialog with live token estimate lets you choose which top-level folders to include
  • First message sends all selected files in full; subsequent messages send only changed files as a delta (token-efficient)
  • Open files with unsaved edits use the live editor buffer — the LLM always sees what you are currently working on
  • New unsaved files (not yet on disk) are auto-included from the editor buffer
  • File watcher monitors the project directory; the badge shows a changed-file count before each send
  • Re-opening a saved chat restores project context; files are silently re-expanded if hashes match, otherwise a stale badge is shown
  • Whole-file attachments are blocked while project context is ON (editor selections and console attachments remain available)
  • New 📁 Context tab in Settings: max file size, max file count, extra exclusion glob patterns (on top of built-in exclusions and .gitignore)

What's new in 0.5.1

• Chat history search — live search field in the history popup filters by title preview and full message content simultaneously as you type
• Table <br> tag fix — line breaks inside table cells are now rendered correctly instead of appearing as literal <br> text
• Table scroll fix — mouse wheel over a table now scrolls the chat window instead of scrolling the table widget independently

What's new in 0.5.0

• IPython console context menu — right-click anywhere in the IPython console to access the AI Chat submenu: Add console content to context attaches the full console output (ANSI codes stripped); Add selection to context attaches the highlighted text
• Console attachment colour distinction — console context tags use a teal-green badge colour to distinguish them from the blue editor/file tags at a glance
• Think block show/hide scroll fix — toggling the thinking block no longer causes the chat pane to jump to the bottom; scroll position is preserved
• Live code block rendering — the code block widget appears at the first ``` line and grows in real time; finalised when the closing fence arrives
• Code block height fixes — accurate height from fontMetrics().lineSpacing(); horizontal scrollbar space reserved; single-line blocks no longer clipped

What's new in 0.4.1

• Default system prompt for new chat — pick a saved prompt as the default in Settings → System Prompts; it is applied automatically every time a new chat is started
• Think block streaming fix — <think> blocks render as the collapsible Thinking widget immediately after </think> arrives, not only at stream end
• Nested list streaming fix — nested list items now have correct line breaks during progressive rendering
• Code-only message fix — a response that is a single code block no longer produces an empty code widget; it renders correctly when the closing fence arrives
• build_code_block crash fix — UnboundLocalError when loading saved chats with code blocks is resolved

What's new in 0.4.0

• Processing spinner — braille spinner shown while waiting for the first LLM token; disappears the moment streaming starts
• Incremental markdown rendering — response formatted in real time as it streams; completed blocks become rendered widgets instantly; only the trailing incomplete block is shown as plain text
• HTTP error display — API errors shown in a dark-red styled box with an "⚠ Response error" header; no empty assistant block created on error
• Delete on error blocks — delete button on error response blocks now works correctly
• Regenerate on error — Regenerate button now appears on error response blocks for an immediate retry

What's new in 0.3.2

• Plugin entry-point renamed to ai_chat_plugin (spyder.plugins) and ai_fim_provider (spyder.completions) for clarity
• NAME / CONF_SECTION in AIChatPlugin updated to "ai_chat_plugin"; COMPLETION_PROVIDER_NAME / CONF_SECTION in AiFimProvider updated to "ai_fim_provider" / "ai_chat_plugin"

What's new in 0.3.1

• Settings → ⚡ Auto-complete tab redesigned as a step-by-step wizard: enable → set provider/URL → Load Models → pick model + backend; backend probe validates response body to avoid false-positive matches
• Model list and backend list persist after save and reopen — no need to re-run Load Models every time
• Test Connection button in the Connection tab — probes GET /models with an OpenAI-SDK-style User-Agent (fixes Cloudflare 403 / error 1010 on Groq and similar providers)
• System Prompts tab: Edit button removed; selecting a prompt immediately opens it for editing; Save activates only when content changes
• Commands tab: Edit button removed; selecting a command immediately opens it for editing; Save activates only when content changes
• Settings window wider (+10%); tabs stretch edge-to-edge; "🖊 Editor" tab renamed to "🖊 Dialogs"
• FIM cursor-offset bug fixed: completions are now correct for files with \r\n line endings

What's new in 0.3.0

• AI auto-complete (FIM) — fill-in-middle ghost-text completions in the code editor
• Tab to accept, Escape to dismiss, Alt+\ for manual trigger
• Supports Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, DeepSeek, Codestral/Mistral, OpenRouter, custom endpoints
• Trigger modes: auto (debounce), after new line, manual

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Features

	Feature	Details
🗨️	Chat panel	Scrollable conversation with colour-coded user / assistant messages
⚡	Streaming	Token-by-token streaming with live incremental markdown rendering — blocks are formatted as they arrive
🔁	Model selector	Dropdown populated live from the API — switch models instantly
🔧	12 providers	OpenAI, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, Together, Fireworks, OpenRouter, Azure, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, Custom
⚙	Inference params	Per-chat hyperparameters popup — provider-aware, resets on New Chat
🔑	Optional API key	Leave blank for local models that need no authentication
🧠	System prompt	Custom prompt field, or select from a saved prompts library
💬	Saved system prompts	Define reusable prompts; manage via Settings → System Prompts tab
⏹	Stop	Cancel a streaming reply at any time
🗑	New Chat	Start a fresh conversation; current one saved automatically
📋	Chat history	Browse, load, and delete saved chats; live search by title or content; active chat highlighted in green
🗂	Chat collections	Organise chats into named collections; ⚙ manager to create / rename / delete; right-click to move chats; search within one or across all
📎	File context	Attach whole files or selected text from the editor, or IPython console output — colour-coded tags (blue = editor, teal = console)
🖊️	Markdown rendering	Headings, bold, italic, tables, code blocks, blockquotes, links, strikethrough
🗂	Nested lists	Arbitrarily deep bullet & numbered lists, mixed types at any level
🧠	Thinking blocks	<think> tags rendered as a collapsible scrollable box (DeepSeek-R1, QwQ, …)
📋	Copy to editor	Insert any code block or full response at the cursor in the active file
🗑	Delete exchange	Remove any exchange with a 3-second undo window
🔄	Regenerate	Re-run the last assistant response with one click
↔	Horizontal scroll	Wide code blocks scroll horizontally instead of clipping
⚙	Settings	Tabbed dialog: provider + Test Connection, dialog font sizes, history, system prompts, commands, auto-complete
/	Commands	Slash-command aliases with picker dropdown; expand to full prompts before sending
✍️	AI auto-complete	FIM ghost-text completions in the editor — Tab to accept, Escape to dismiss
🤖	Agentic mode	LLM creates files, runs console code, installs packages, applies patches — one-click confirmation per action

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Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.9
• Spyder ≥ 6.0
• No additional Python packages — HTTP via urllib (stdlib), UI via Qt (bundled with Spyder)

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Installation

From PyPI

pip install spyder-ai-chat

From source / development build

Clone the source code from the repository:

https://sourceforge.net/p/spyder-ai-chat-plugin/code/ci/master/tree/

Then install in editable mode:

cd spyder_ai_chat
pip install -e .

Important: install into the same Python environment that Spyder uses.

After installation, restart Spyder. The panel appears automatically. If not visible: Window → Panes → AI Chat.

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Quick start

1. Open Settings (⚙ button in the panel toolbar).
2. On the Connection tab, select your Provider from the dropdown.
3. Fill in the API URL and key as needed (pre-filled for known providers).
4. Click Test Connection to verify credentials, then click OK.
5. Click ⟳ to load the model list and pick a model.
6. Type a message and press Ctrl+Enter or click Send.

To enable AI auto-complete in the editor:

1. Open Settings → ⚡ Auto-complete.
2. Check Enable AI auto-completion in the editor.
3. Select a provider and API URL, then click Load Models.
4. Choose a model and backend type, adjust parameters if needed, and click OK.

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License

MIT — see the LICENSE file included in the package.