Ask a language model about the bundled datasets

Sends a question through rmoriebricklayer::llmask(), to a language model you bring: an OpenAI-compatible endpoint of your own, a provider whose key is set (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral and more: rmoriebricklayer::llmprvd()), or an Ollama server. Nothing is sent anywhere you did not set up. An Ollama server is asked only when you chose one: route = "ollama", an OLLAMA_HOST, OLLAMA_BASE_URL, OLLAMA_MODEL or OLLAMA_API_KEY environment variable, or an ollama.* setting or route = "ollama" saved with mdllmconf(). Without any of these, an Ollama server that happens to run on this machine (at localhost:11434) is neither probed nor sent the question. The model is given every function of rmoriedata and rmoriebricklayer and tools to read their help, and this package's catalogue of datasets, so it can name the tables and write the code that loads them. rmoriebricklayer::llmstat() shows which route would answer; mdllmconf() (or rmbl config setup from the shell) saves a provider's key, the route and the model.

Usage

mdask(question, model = NULL, route = NULL)

Arguments

question: Character scalar.
model: Optional model name; the route's model when NULL.
route: NULL or "auto" (the first route that is set up), "own", "ollama" or a provider id such as "anthropic" (that route only).

Value

Character scalar: the answer, or a sentence saying what went wrong or what to set up (never an error, so a script keeps going).

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# These need a language model: a provider's key, Ollama, or your own server.
Sys.setenv(ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "...")
mdask("which bundled datasets cover Toronto police use-of-force?")
mdask("summarise the SIU director's-report corpus", route = "ollama",
    model = "qwen3:8b")
} # }

# With no route set up the call returns a setup hint, not an error, and
# reaches no network:
if ("llmstat" %in% getNamespaceExports("rmoriebricklayer")) {
  old <- Sys.getenv(c("OLLAMA_HOST", "MORIE_LLM_BASE_URL"), unset = NA)
  Sys.setenv(OLLAMA_HOST = "off", MORIE_LLM_BASE_URL = "off")
  if (!nrow(subset(rmoriebricklayer::llmstat(),
                   status %in% c("key set", "configured")))) {
    cat(mdask("hello"))
  }
  for (v in names(old)) {
    if (is.na(old[[v]])) Sys.unsetenv(v) else do.call(Sys.setenv, as.list(old[v]))
  }
}
#> The language model could not answer: No language-model route is set up on this machine: bring your own key, or run a model locally:
#>   a provider's key: set its variable (OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, ...) or `rmoriebricklayer config set PROVIDER.key`; providers: openai, anthropic, gemini, openrouter, groq, together, fireworks, deepseek, mistral, xai, cerebras, perplexity, huggingface, opencode, cohere, nvidia
#>   local Ollama: OLLAMA_HOST=off
#>   own endpoint: `rmoriebricklayer config set own.url URL` (and own.model, own.key) for any OpenAI-compatible server (LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp, a company gateway)
#> `rmoriebricklayer config setup` walks through it.