Watch something live
Ask CLIO to watch something that keeps changing, and it can show you how it is doing in a chart or table that updates on its own. You do not have to send another message for the view to change.
An example: a 3D printer
Section titled “An example: a 3D printer”Say your printer reports its status at an address on your network. Ask in plain words:
Keep an eye on my 3D printer and show me how it's doing. Its status is athttp://printer.local/status.What the agent typically does:
- Reads the status once to see which values answer “how is it doing”, such as the state, progress and nozzle temperature.
- Starts a background script that reads the
status every few seconds and writes each reading to a stream named for it, for
example
printer. - Builds a dashboard bound to that stream: a table of the latest reading and a chart of recent ones.
- Asks the script to send a message when the print finishes or fails.
While the dashboard is open, it updates as readings arrive. Ask “How is it doing?” and the agent answers from the stream’s newest entries instead of reading the printer again. When the print ends, the script reports it, the agent tells you, and the dashboard shows the last readings marked as closed.
To end it early, say “Stop watching the printer.” The agent cancels the script, which closes the stream. The readings so far are kept.
The backend has to reach the device. A CLIO backend on a cluster or a remote server cannot reach devices on your home or lab network.
What a stream is
Section titled “What a stream is”A stream is a named artifact of your workspace whose content lives in clio-core, the store CLIO keeps everything else in. A script writes to it as often as the source changes, without a separate tool call for each write.
- Entries of any type. Each entry is a record (a set of named values, such as one reading), a line of text, or bytes of a stated type, such as an image.
- Latest entry or recent history. A stream keeps its newest entry, or a window of its newest entries, chosen when it is opened (at most 1,000).
- Open, then closed. A stream is open while its script writes it. When the script ends or is cancelled, or the agent stops it, the stream closes. Its entries stay and read as closed, also after a restart of CLIO.
- The agent can read it. Ask how it is doing and the agent reads the stream’s state and newest entries; ask which streams there are and it lists the workspace’s streams.
Where you see a stream
Section titled “Where you see a stream”- In the side panel. Open the stream from the conversation’s artifacts. It shows the newest entries (records as a table, text as lines, other entries by type and size), and reads “Live” with the time of the last update while it is open, or “Closed at” and the time once it has closed.
- In a chart or table. A dashboard can bind a chart or a table to the stream; the view reshapes the records itself, for example a chart of one value over time.
Both update by themselves while they are on screen. Updates are sent only while someone has a view of the stream open; with none open, nothing is sent.
Follow a file as it changes
Section titled “Follow a file as it changes”Not everything needs a stream. A file that a script rewrites now and then, such as a log the instrument appends to, can be followed directly. Ask for a chart that “follows the file as it grows”. The view follows the file’s newest version, and each time the file is registered as a new version the view moves to it.
A background script registers a changed file at most once every 5 seconds
(artifacts.version_interval_s). Changes in between become one version with the
file’s contents at the end of the interval; nothing is lost. When the script stops
cleanly, a waiting version is still recorded.
Use a stream for values that change every second. Use a followed file when the file itself is what you want to keep.
Export a live view
Section titled “Export a live view”When you export a conversation, a view bound to a stream keeps the entries and state it had at that moment. Opened offline:
- a closed stream reads “Closed at” with the time, showing its last entries;
- a stream still being written reads “Captured at” with the time “while live”, showing the entries it had then.
An exported view does not update. The conversation’s published dashboards appear in the export under Saved results, each at its newest version with the data it reads.
A dashboard’s own HTML dashboard download, from the viewer’s download menu, is a separate export; see Explore charts and dashboards.