ark

Ark is an R kernel for Jupyter applications that serves as the interface between R and the Positron IDE. It provides structured interaction between R and any Jupyter-compatible frontend.

Ark combines three protocols in one tool: a Jupyter kernel for interactive R evaluation, an LSP server for IDE features like completions and jump-to-definition, and a DAP server for step-debugging R functions. Unlike similar tools written primarily in R (IRKernel, languageserver, vscDebugger), Ark is implemented as a native frontend that binds directly to R’s C API, with its LSP and DAP components written in Rust for performance and tight integration with the kernel. This architecture enables introspective features based on the live R session state and supports both Console and Notebook modes.