save_launcher: Save and start 'shidashi' apps for AI agents

In shidashi: A Shiny Dashboard Template Modular System with Chat Bot Support

Save and start 'shidashi' apps for AI agents

Description

save_launcher saves how to start a 'shidashi' app, so that an AI agent connected through the ⁠MCP⁠ proxy can list it and, after asking the user, start it and open one of its modules in the browser. Nothing is started automatically: the agent only launches a saved app when the user picks it.

run_launcher starts a saved app. The ⁠MCP⁠ proxy calls it when the agent launches an app; it can also be called from R.

Usage

save_launcher(
  id,
  root_path,
  host = "127.0.0.1",
  port = NA,
  modules = NULL,
  description = "",
  prelaunch = NULL,
  copy_app = FALSE,
  ...
)

run_launcher(id, ...)

Arguments

id	a short name for the app, made of letters, digits, "-", and "_". The agent and the user refer to the app by this name.
root_path	the app directory; it must contain ‘modules.yaml’
host	the host to listen on
port	the port to listen on; NA picks a free port at launch
modules	the module identifiers the agent may open; default is the modules that have AI agents enabled (an ‘agents.yaml’ file)
description	a short description shown to the agent
prelaunch	optional R code, as a character string, to run before the app starts
copy_app	whether to start a copy of the app, kept in the cache folder, instead of the app directory itself
...	for save_launcher, named metadata about the app (character, numeric, or logical values), shown to the agent but not used to start the app; for run_launcher, extra arguments passed to render, which override the defaults (launch_browser = FALSE, as_job = FALSE)

Details

All launchers are kept in one file, ‘launchers.json’, in the 'shidashi' cache folder (tools::R_user_dir("shidashi", "cache")). Saving again with the same id replaces that launcher. Saving a launcher also installs or updates the ⁠MCP⁠ proxy script.

With copy_app = TRUE, the app folder is copied to ‘saved_apps/<id>/’ in the cache folder (without ‘.git’ and ‘node_modules’), and the launcher starts the copy. The folder is cleared before each copy. Without copy_app, a copy left from an earlier save of the same id is removed.

Value

save_launcher returns the saved launcher, invisibly. run_launcher runs the app; see render.

Examples

# This example saves into a temporary folder; by default launchers are
# saved in the user's cache folder
old_opt <- options(shidashi.cache_dir = tempfile())

root <- system.file("builtin-templates", "bslib-bare", package = "shidashi")
save_launcher(
  "demo-app", root,
  description = "Demo dashboard shipped with shidashi",
  lab = "example"
)

if (interactive()) {
  run_launcher("demo-app", launch_browser = TRUE)
}

options(old_opt)

shidashi documentation built on Oct. 12, 2026, 1:11 a.m.