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Program of Thought Module

Source: R/module-program-of-thought.R
module-program-of-thought.Rd

A module that generates R code to solve problems, executes it through an explicitly configured runner, and uses the execution results to produce answers. This is particularly effective for tasks requiring exact computation (arithmetic, statistics, data manipulation) where LLMs alone are unreliable.

Details

The execution flow is:

  1. LLM generates R code based on the inputs

  2. Code is executed by the configured code runner

  3. If execution fails, the error is fed back to the LLM for repair

  4. Steps 2-3 repeat until success or max_iters is reached

  5. Final answer is extracted from the execution result

Security: Code execution requires explicit opt-in via runner or interpreter_factory. The built-in runner uses a separate process but is NOT a security sandbox. Inspect runner$policy() before execution. For untrusted inputs, provide a runner backed by OS-level sandboxing (such as a container or AppArmor).

Runner lifecycle: supply exactly one runtime source. runner is caller-owned, reused across calls, and never closed by dsprrr. The backend determines whether execution state persists and whether reset() is available; serialize access to stateful backends. interpreter_factory is a zero-argument function that returns a fresh runner implementing execute(), policy(), optional start(), and terminal shutdown() or close(). The module owns that runner for one invocation and shuts it down exactly once on success, error, or interrupt.

run_async() supports factory-backed ProgramOfThought in an isolated mirai process. It rejects caller-owned runners. stream_async() and a module's $stream() method remain unavailable because streaming would bypass code execution. run_stream() may use its one-shot forward() fallback, but rejects an actual token-stream request before provider or factory work.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Create a runner (required for code execution)
runner <- r_code_runner(timeout = 30)

# Create a Program of Thought module
pot <- program_of_thought(
  signature = "question -> answer",
  runner = runner
)

# Use it for computation tasks
result <- run(pot, question = "What is the sum of primes under 100?", .llm = llm)
} # }