From messy to meaningful data: LLM-powered classification in R

This repo includes the data, code, and slides for my post::conf(2025) talk.

API key setup

(From a Posit blog post by Sara Altman.)

First, we need to install the necessary packages and set up API keys. You’ll need:

• ellmer, which simplifies the process of interacting with LLMs from R and

• usethis, which we’ll use to set up the API keys.

install.packages(c("ellmer", "usethis"))

Next, add your API key(s) to your .Renviron file. You can open your .Renviron for editing with usethis::edit_r_environ().

You can choose the LLM that you want to work with. ellmer includes functions for working with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and other providers. You can see a full list of supported providers here.

Add your desired API key(s) to your .Renviron, for example:

OPENAI_API_KEY=my-api-key-openai-uejkK92
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=api-key-anthropic-nxue0
GOOGLE_API_KEY=api-key-google-palw2n

For selecting a model, see this list of Anthropic model names and features.