For years, Jupyter Notebook has been the default tool for data analysis in Python.
But it assumes one thing:
👉 you start with code.
What if you didn’t?
I’ve been experimenting with a different workflow.
Instead of writing Python, you describe what you want in plain English — and the system generates and runs the code for you.
The flow becomes:
prompt → LLM-generated code → auto-execution → results
Code is still there.
But it’s no longer the starting point.
Why this might matter
The idea came from a simple observation.
Someone told me:
“I don’t care about the code. I care about the results.”
And honestly, that stuck with me.
As engineers, we often treat code as the main interface.
But for many people, it’s just a tool to get answers.
Old problems... less important?
There has been a lot of criticism of notebooks over the years:
- hidden state
- mixing code and outputs
- hard to review in git
These problems are real.
But I’m starting to wonder if AI changes which of them actually matter.
If:
- code is generated
- execution is automated
- results become the main interface
then some of these issues feel... less central.
New problems appear
Of course, we are not removing complexity — we are shifting it.
New challenges show up:
- trusting LLM-generated code
- debugging when something goes wrong
- less visibility into what is actually happening
In some cases, these might be even harder than the original problems.
A small but important detail
One thing I care about a lot:
👉 everything is still saved as a standard .ipynb file
So you can always:
- open it in a classic notebook
- inspect the code
- edit anything manually
Nothing is locked in.
So what’s really changing?
Maybe the biggest shift is this:
We are moving from:
code → results
to:
intent → results
Code becomes an implementation detail, not the main interface.
Open question
Are we solving notebook problems — or just hiding them behind AI?
I wrote a longer version with screenshots and implementation details here:
👉 https://mljar.com/blog/reimagine-python-notebook-in-ai-era/
I’d love to hear your perspective:
- Would you use a prompt-first notebook?
- Does this make notebooks better — or just different?
