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Livedocs – a modern, real-time collaborative Python notebook. Improving ergonomics for Python

77 points · submitted Feb 2025 by u/peekkk · Resource · archived

Hi everyone, we (me and two other Python/Rust/Typescript devs) just built a collaborative Python notebook. We built it from the ground up, but are still using Jupyter at the core, but stripped away everything else that slows it down. Livedocs lives in your browser, and lets you experiment in a notebook and share your work as an app.

Our plan is to make it the fastest, most ergonomic Python notebook around. A few things we’ve shipped:

  • Added lots of new cell types like charts, SQL (powered by DuckDB), tables, inputs, database saves, and even interacting with LLMs directly via a cell
  • Notebook is internally represented as a DAG, for reactivity 
  • Re-built most internals with rust
  • Added support for user-supplied secrets, built-in vars

We’re looking to improve the Python editing experience by connecting the editor to an LSP and adding AI generation to help produce code. 

We’re looking for feedback on the notebook from Pythonistas on the ergonomics of the notebook. We want to keep the experience as close to a local development environment as possible. 

29 comments · 86% upvoted · other discussions

comments

Toby_Wan 17 points · Feb 2025

What is your edge over Marimo?

peekkk [OP] 4 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

We have a lot in common with Marimo, but there's a few things we currently do that Marimo lacks. Eg: prompting AI models as a cell, etc

Also, Livedocs is completely cloud based and has a generous free tier. So it's literally zero-setup for folks who want to dive into Polars, Duckdb, etc directly.

I may be biased, but our UI is way better too 😉

peekkk [OP] 2 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

Also, out of the box, you get to work with your datasets using DuckDB, Polars, AI models, and distribute your experiments as fully interactive apps for other people to use

brandonZappy 7 points · Feb 2025

SaaS only?

peekkk [OP] 4 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

Currently, yes, but there is a free plan with reasonable amount of compute given.

We are planning on open sourcing large parts of the codebase by end of year, but are not quite ready for it yet. And ofcourse, connecting to a local kernel and self-hosting will be part of that push.

[deleted] 4 points · Feb 2025

What is the advantage of this over the many other collaborative "jupyter notebook" style tools?

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

Boils down to better performance, varied cell types (eg: charts, sql/duckdb, prompts, inputs, etc)

We see this as the baseline. The cool thing I really want to build is a sort of "devin for data science" so that's the ultimate goal here

[deleted] 3 points · Feb 2025

Your post doesn't have any performance metrics/comparisons. Also, lots of juptyer notebook style interfaces have separate cell types for python, scala, sql, visualizations, data previews, etc.

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

I will be doing a more detailed post about performance, this didn't feel like the right place for it. There are definitely Jupyter extensions that enable specific features, but Livedocs aims to be the best starting place for getting all of thing without any setup.

Out of the box, you get to work with your datasets using DuckDB, Polars, AI models, and distribute your experiments as fully interactive apps for other people to use

[deleted] 6 points · Feb 2025

I will be doing a more detailed post about performance, this didn't feel like the right place for it.

You should definitely lead with proving your performance claims given that without them there is seemingly no reason for anyone to even consider your tool as an alternative.

There are definitely Jupyter extensions that enable specific features, but Livedocs aims to be the best starting place for getting all of thing without any setup.

I'm not talking about Jupyter extensions. I'm talking about jupyter-like tools like Databricks, Google Colab, SageMaker, CoCalc, Deepnote, Kaggle Kernels, Azure Notebooks, Marimo, etc. You aren't only competing with Jupyter and JupyterHub. In fact the benefits you are suggesting your tool has sounds very similar if not identical to what most of these other heavily developed tools already can do. So what reason would anyone have to choose a very small project over one that is more actively maintained by professional devs?

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

True, we are a small team and early project. Give us a shot, perhaps we may surprise you with the quality of our work. We've been in the space for 5 years now, so definitely here to stay.

Appreciate your feedback, most on the performance and cache related stuff we're doing will come soon. I will make sure to ping you over a DM with a link when it's live!

[deleted] 3 points · Feb 2025

True, we are a small team and early project. Give us a shot, perhaps we may surprise you with the quality of our work. We've been in the space for 5 years now, so definitely here to stay.

Again, you should provide your performance metrics to give people a reason to trust you. A small group of people with unknown credentials making lofty promises with nothing to demo is only going to undermine your credibility. You didn't even share any examples of your tool working. The only thing any of us know about it is what you've decided to call it and some vague guarantee of "performance" and a list of features that seems to be no different than the dozen other competitors in this space.

Instead of asking us to put faith in some anonymous group, why not just show us your current benchmarks?

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

You can check out the product over at Livedocs.com and see for yourself. Please share your feedback, it would help us greatly in improving the product

[deleted] 0 points · Feb 2025

I didn't see any performance benchmarks on the website.

peekkk [OP] 0 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

You can run the benchmarks yourself.

The execution time of various cells is available.

What I’m trying to figure out is: we are currently measuring performance as how long does the same exact cell take in Jupyter/Livedocs on the same machine.

I think this is a bit of a fake benchmark because Livedocs is using a DAG so cells are dirty marked (unlike traditional notebooks)

So I’m trying to figure out is what’s a fair benchmark, and not a vanity metric.

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askvictor 1 points · Feb 2025

Great idea, and nice work! What's your monetisation plan? Obviously you'll need to start paying hosting costs at some point, so I'd really rather companies were upfront about this rather than the tired old "free then start charging unreasonable amounts once you're locked in and the investors want some return" game. If it's good, I'll pay for it (also will happily try it for free as long as I have some idea of what it will cost down the track)

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

I have a few super early ideas around monetization but waiting to add things like GPU support and more. I'm thinking to always support the free tier, and have a paid tier for a flat fee ($65/month up to 3 members + $20 per additional member)

GPUs will change this ofcourse, since they are not cheap to come by. GPU usage will be usage based. What do you think?

Balance- 1 points · Feb 2025

This could be interesting for some universities. Do you provide an educational tier?

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

We could if that is of interest! Even give it for free to universities etc

Bdod6 1 points · Jun 2025

I tried this out. Attempted to connect BQ database and it did not work. Felt like it was quite slow. Much prefer deepnote instead.

livedocshq 1 points · Jul 2025

Lots of new improvements made. Please try again!

peekkk [OP] 1 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

Tried to share a link here, but it got auto-modded. Not looking to sell anything, just appreciate your feedback. We're livedocs (dot) com

ahjorth 2 points · Feb 2025

SaaS only. Can you explain how you’re not trying to sell something?

peekkk [OP] 0 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

It’s free to use, check it out and share your feedback please. It would help us improve the product

ahjorth 2 points · Feb 2025

CandyCrush is free to use. So what?

peekkk [OP] 0 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

You can run Python on ours, but I don’t think candy crush has that feature 😉

PhENTZ 1 points · Feb 2025

S3 backend as a file system would be great

peekkk [OP] 0 points · Feb 2025 · git push -f

This is on the cards for early march!