How do I enable CSV file processing in the Assistants playground?

Based on the documentation, file attachments (and their processing) need some custom wiring. By default, the Assistants playground and the underlying runtime are set up for text-based interactions. Although you can attach files, the assistant doesn't automatically parse or analyze CSV content out-of-the-box.

To achieve your goal without having to paste CSV contents manually, you’d need to:

• Enable file attachment processing:
  Configure your runtime with an attachment adapter (for example using the CompositeAttachmentAdapter) that suits your use case. The documentation provides an example showing how to enable attachments by passing an adapter to the useEdgeRuntime hook.

• Implement CSV parsing:
  Create or integrate a CSV parser to extract the data from the uploaded file and then pass that structured data to your assistant. There isn’t a default CSV adapter provided, so you may need to extend the adapter logic or build a custom solution for handling CSV files.

A sample setup to enable attachments might look like this:

TSCopied
import { useEdgeRuntime } from "@assistant-ui/react";
import {
  CompositeAttachmentAdapter,
  SimpleImageAttachmentAdapter,
  SimpleTextAttachmentAdapter,
} from "@assistant-ui/react";

const runtime = useEdgeRuntime({
  api: "/api/chat",
  adapters: {
    attachments: new CompositeAttachmentAdapter([
      new SimpleImageAttachmentAdapter(),
      new SimpleTextAttachmentAdapter(),
      // You could add your custom CSV adapter here if implemented
    ]),
  },
});

By wiring up the attachments through a custom adapter (or extending an existing one), you can extract file content upon upload, parse the CSV, and relay the structured data to the assistant for analysis. This extra step is necessary because the assistant’s default behavior only supports text-based input.

So, if you want the assistant to analyze the CSV data directly, you’ll need to implement that middleware logic that processes the file upload, extracts the CSV content, and then forwards it as structured data within your conversation.

Cheers,
Mark