chat_cortex_analyst: Create a chatbot that speaks to the Snowflake Cortex Analyst

In ellmer: Chat with Large Language Models

Create a chatbot that speaks to the Snowflake Cortex Analyst

Description

Chat with the LLM-powered Snowflake Cortex Analyst.

Authentication

chat_cortex() picks up the following ambient Snowflake credentials:

• A static OAuth token defined via the SNOWFLAKE_TOKEN environment variable.

• Key-pair authentication credentials defined via the SNOWFLAKE_USER and SNOWFLAKE_PRIVATE_KEY (which can be a PEM-encoded private key or a path to one) environment variables.

• Posit Workbench-managed Snowflake credentials for the corresponding account.

• Viewer-based credentials on Posit Connect. Requires the connectcreds package.

Known limitations

Unlike most comparable model APIs, Cortex does not take a system prompt. Instead, the caller must provide a "semantic model" describing available tables, their meaning, and verified queries that can be run against them as a starting point. The semantic model can be passed as a YAML string or via reference to an existing file in a Snowflake Stage.

Note that Cortex does not support multi-turn, so it will not remember previous messages. Nor does it support registering tools, and attempting to do so will result in an error.

See chat_snowflake() to chat with more general-purpose models hosted on Snowflake.

Usage

chat_cortex_analyst(
  account = snowflake_account(),
  credentials = NULL,
  model_spec = NULL,
  model_file = NULL,
  api_args = list(),
  echo = c("none", "text", "all")
)

Arguments

account	A Snowflake account identifier, e.g. "testorg-test_account". Defaults to the value of the SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT environment variable.
credentials	A list of authentication headers to pass into httr2::req_headers(), a function that returns them when called, or NULL, the default, to use ambient credentials.
model_spec	A semantic model specification, or NULL when using model_file instead.
model_file	Path to a semantic model file stored in a Snowflake Stage, or NULL when using model_spec instead.
api_args	Named list of arbitrary extra arguments appended to the body of every chat API call.
echo	One of the following options: none: don't emit any output (default when running in a function). text: echo text output as it streams in (default when running at the console). all: echo all input and output. Note this only affects the chat() method.

Value

A Chat object.

See Also

Other chatbots: chat_bedrock(), chat_claude(), chat_databricks(), chat_deepseek(), chat_gemini(), chat_github(), chat_groq(), chat_ollama(), chat_openai(), chat_openrouter(), chat_perplexity()

Examples

chat <- chat_cortex_analyst(
  model_file = "@my_db.my_schema.my_stage/model.yaml"
)
chat$chat("What questions can I ask?")

ellmer documentation built on April 4, 2025, 3:53 a.m.