feat(frontend): ambient operator recommender suggestions on the canvas by gupta-sahil01 · Pull Request #6437 · apache/texera

gupta-sahil01 · 2026-07-15T06:17:09Z

What changes were proposed in this PR?

Frontend half (PR 2 of 2) of the ambient operator recommender, Version 1 — see #6293 (design discussion #5240). Depends on the backend /api/recommend endpoint added in the companion backend PR.

After an operator is added to the canvas, 1–3 faded suggestion chips appear on its output port; clicking one materializes that operator and wires the link as a single undoable action. Behaves like code completion, but for dataflow graphs. Opt-in and default-off.

OperatorRecommendationService calls POST /api/recommend and materializes a chosen suggestion. Fails soft: a disabled feature, an output-less operator (e.g. a chart sink), or a backend error all yield no suggestions and leave the canvas unchanged.
Suggestion overlay in the workflow editor, reusing the existing chat-popover anchoring pattern (screen-coord conversion; re-anchored on operator move / zoom / pan); dismissed on blank click or when the anchor operator is deleted.
Opt-in flag operatorRecommendationEnabled (default false), threaded through gui.conf → GuiConfig → ConfigResource → the frontend GuiConfig type + mock.
Routing for the endpoint added to the dev proxy (frontend/proxy.config.json) and the prod gateway (bin/k8s/.../gateway-routes.yaml), alongside the existing /api/agents.

Any related issues, documentation, discussions?

Closes Ambient "operator recommender" #6293
Design discussion: Ambient "operator recommender" — predictive next-operator suggestions on the canvas #5240

How was this PR tested?

yarn ng test — operator-recommendation.service.spec.ts, 7 passed (enabled/disabled gating, POST body, empty-list fallbacks on error and output-less operators, materialize link wiring).
yarn ng build --configuration=production — succeeds under strict templates.
End-to-end (manual): ran the full local-dev stack with GUI_WORKFLOW_WORKSPACE_OPERATOR_RECOMMENDATION_ENABLED=true; verified suggestion chips render on the output port, clicking materializes + links the operator, and POST /api/recommend is reached through the proxy.

Was this PR authored or co-authored using generative AI tooling?

Generated-by: Anthropic Claude (Claude Code)

github-actions · 2026-07-15T06:17:37Z

Automated Reviewer Suggestions

Based on the git blame history of the changed files, we recommend the following reviewers:

Contributors with relevant context: @Ma77Ball, @xuang7, @bobbai00
You can notify them by mentioning @Ma77Ball, @xuang7, @bobbai00 in a comment.

Yicong-Huang · 2026-07-15T16:06:52Z

great feature, could you please include screenshots/gifs in the PR description?

github-actions · 2026-07-15T16:25:26Z

⚠️ Benchmark changes need a look

🟢 2 better · 🔴 3 worse · ⚪ 10 noise (<±5%) · 0 without baseline

Compared against main 181e38b benchmarked on this same runner, so the delta is largely free of cross-runner hardware noise. The "7d avg" column still reflects the gh-pages dashboard. Treat <±5% as noise unless repeated.

Dashboard · Run

	config	throughput	MB/s	latency	max Δ latest / 7d
🔴	bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	373	0.228	26,923/32,355/32,355 us	🔴 +13.4% / 🔴 +131.7%
⚪	bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	793	0.484	125,476/134,482/134,482 us	⚪ within ±5% / 🔴 +37.5%
⚪	bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	913	0.557	1,100,195/1,126,374/1,126,374 us	⚪ within ±5% / 🔴 +21.9%

Baseline details

Latest main 181e38b from same runner

config	metric	PR	latest main	7d avg	Δ latest	Δ 7d
bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	throughput	373 tuples/sec	411 tuples/sec	847.3 tuples/sec	-9.2%	-56.0%
bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	MB/s	0.228 MB/s	0.251 MB/s	0.517 MB/s	-9.2%	-55.9%
bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	p50	26,923 us	23,740 us	11,621 us	+13.4%	+131.7%
bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	p95	32,355 us	35,239 us	14,154 us	-8.2%	+128.6%
bs=10 sw=10 sl=64	p99	32,355 us	35,239 us	19,069 us	-8.2%	+69.7%
bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	throughput	793 tuples/sec	831 tuples/sec	1,104 tuples/sec	-4.6%	-28.2%
bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	MB/s	0.484 MB/s	0.507 MB/s	0.674 MB/s	-4.5%	-28.2%
bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	p50	125,476 us	120,718 us	91,279 us	+3.9%	+37.5%
bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	p95	134,482 us	131,993 us	97,771 us	+1.9%	+37.5%
bs=100 sw=10 sl=64	p99	134,482 us	131,993 us	107,798 us	+1.9%	+24.8%
bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	throughput	913 tuples/sec	932 tuples/sec	1,127 tuples/sec	-2.0%	-19.0%
bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	MB/s	0.557 MB/s	0.569 MB/s	0.688 MB/s	-2.1%	-19.0%
bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	p50	1,100,195 us	1,075,607 us	902,553 us	+2.3%	+21.9%
bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	p95	1,126,374 us	1,101,228 us	941,491 us	+2.3%	+19.6%
bs=1000 sw=10 sl=64	p99	1,126,374 us	1,101,228 us	979,025 us	+2.3%	+15.1%

Raw CSV

config_idx,batch_size,schema_width,string_len,num_batches,total_ms,total_tuples,total_bytes,tuples_per_sec,mb_per_sec,lat_p50_us,lat_p95_us,lat_p99_us
0,10,10,64,20,536.36,200,128000,373,0.228,26923.17,32355.08,32355.08
1,100,10,64,20,2522.41,2000,1280000,793,0.484,125475.72,134482.36,134482.36
2,1000,10,64,20,21901.91,20000,12800000,913,0.557,1100194.50,1126374.01,1126374.01

gupta-sahil01 · 2026-07-15T17:38:50Z

great feature, could you please include screenshots/gifs in the PR description?

added screenshots

chenlica · 2026-07-16T07:09:42Z

@xuang7 @zuozhiw : Per the discussion #5240, can you review it?

xuang7 · 2026-07-16T22:21:19Z

@xuang7 @zuozhiw : Per the discussion #5240, can you review it?

I'm not very familiar with this part of the codebase, so I'll leave general comments where I can. It would probably be helpful to assign someone more familiar with this area for a thorough review.

Copilot

Copilot encountered an error and was unable to review this pull request. You can try again by re-requesting a review.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 12 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

+  public materialize(
+    sourceOperator: OperatorPredicate,
+    sourceOutputPortID: string,
+    recommendedType: string
+  ): string | undefined {
+    const newOperator = this.workflowUtilService.getNewOperatorPredicate(recommendedType);
+
+    const sourcePosition = this.workflowActionService
+      .getJointGraphWrapper()
+      .getElementPosition(sourceOperator.operatorID);
+    const newPosition: Point = {
+      x: sourcePosition.x + JointUIService.DEFAULT_OPERATOR_WIDTH + OperatorRecommendationService.MATERIALIZE_GAP_X,
+      y: sourcePosition.y,
+    };


+    this.operatorRecommendationService
+      .getRecommendations(operator)
+      .pipe(untilDestroyed(this))
+      .subscribe(recommendations => {
+        // The operator may have been deleted while the request was in flight.
+        if (
+          recommendations.length === 0 ||
+          !this.workflowActionService.getTexeraGraph().hasOperator(operator.operatorID)
+        ) {
+          return;
+        }
+        const position = this.getRecommendationPosition(operator.operatorID);
+        if (!position) {
+          return;
+        }
+        this.ghostSuggestion = {
+          operatorId: operator.operatorID,
+          sourceOutputPortID,
+          position,
+          recommendations,
+        };
+        this.changeDetectorRef.detectChanges();
+      });


Yicong-Huang · 2026-07-17T07:20:51Z

Hi @gupta-sahil01 a high level comment: let's not name it ghost suggestions. Let's find a better name for it?

gupta-sahil01 · 2026-07-17T07:23:36Z

Hi @gupta-sahil01 a high level comment: let's not name it ghost suggestions. Let's find a better name for it?

I thought since they were blurred like a "ghost". If you have a better name for it, I'm open to changing it.

Yicong-Huang · 2026-07-17T16:53:38Z

How about just call them "suggested operators"? On the UI, the suggested operators are rendered with faded, blurred effect, but they are real suggestion instances. "ghost" the word has a negative semantic and I'd like to avoid it, and it is bundled with its UI effect: if we were to change such operators UI effect to be not blurred, the naming will be obsolete.

gupta-sahil01 · 2026-07-18T02:54:20Z

How about just call them "suggested operators"? On the UI, the suggested operators are rendered with faded, blurred effect, but they are real suggestion instances. "ghost" the word has a negative semantic and I'd like to avoid it, and it is bundled with its UI effect: if we were to change such operators UI effect to be not blurred, the naming will be obsolete.

Well, the word "ghost" doesn't appear directly in the UI. When we drag an operator from the panel, the 3 suggestions will show up with it.

Yicong-Huang · 2026-07-18T02:57:17Z

Not only about UI, or what user sees, but also for code comments, variable names as well as GitHub discussion, pr titles and description, etc. can we avoid this naming in general? Thanks

chenlica · 2026-07-18T04:06:18Z

@xuang7 and @zuozhiw : can you review it?

Frontend half of the ambient operator recommender (apache#5240). After an operator is added to the canvas, 1-3 faded suggestion chips appear on its output port showing likely next operators; clicking one materializes the operator and wires the link as a single undoable action. - OperatorRecommendationService: calls the stateless agent-service POST /api/recommend endpoint and turns a chosen suggestion into a real operator. Fails soft - a disabled feature, an output-less operator, or a backend error simply yields no suggestions, leaving the canvas unchanged. - Suggestion overlay in the workflow editor, reusing the chat-popover anchoring pattern (screen-coord conversion, re-anchored on move / zoom / pan); dismissed on blank click or when the anchor operator is deleted. - Opt-in GUI config flag `operatorRecommendationEnabled`, default off, threaded through gui.conf, GuiConfig, ConfigResource, and the frontend GuiConfig type + mock.

gupta-sahil01 · 2026-07-18T04:36:05Z

Am I allowed to update the branches because I made some changes with respect to eliminating the word "ghost" from everywhere?

Yicong-Huang · 2026-07-18T04:38:59Z

Am I allowed to update the branches because I made some changes with respect to eliminating the word "ghost" from everywhere?

of course. thought out the review please update the code as requested, or as you see fit.

github-actions Bot assigned gupta-sahil01 Jul 15, 2026

github-actions Bot added feature frontend Changes related to the frontend GUI infra common platform Non-amber Scala service paths labels Jul 15, 2026

mengw15 requested a review from Copilot July 16, 2026 23:23

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of mengw15 July 16, 2026 23:24 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 16, 2026

mengw15 requested a review from Copilot July 17, 2026 04:03

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of mengw15 July 17, 2026 04:04 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 17, 2026

View reviewed changes

chenlica requested review from xuang7 and zuozhiw July 18, 2026 04:06

gupta-sahil01 force-pushed the feat/operator-recommender-frontend branch from 1a02c7d to a0794b6 Compare July 18, 2026 04:29

gupta-sahil01 changed the title ~~feat(frontend): ambient operator recommender ghost suggestions~~ feat(frontend): ambient operator recommender suggestions on the canvas Jul 18, 2026

Merge branch 'main' into feat/operator-recommender-frontend

0c56704

Uh oh!

Conversation

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 15, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

What changes were proposed in this PR?

Any related issues, documentation, discussions?

How was this PR tested?

Was this PR authored or co-authored using generative AI tooling?

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Jul 15, 2026

Automated Reviewer Suggestions

Uh oh!

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 15, 2026

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Jul 15, 2026

⚠️ Benchmark changes need a look

Uh oh!

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 15, 2026

Uh oh!

chenlica commented Jul 16, 2026

Uh oh!

xuang7 commented Jul 16, 2026

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Copilot AI left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Pull request overview

Uh oh!

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 17, 2026

Uh oh!

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 17, 2026

Uh oh!

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 17, 2026

Uh oh!

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 18, 2026

Uh oh!

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 18, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

chenlica commented Jul 18, 2026

Uh oh!

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 18, 2026

Uh oh!

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 18, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

5 participants

gupta-sahil01 commented Jul 15, 2026 •

edited

Loading

Yicong-Huang commented Jul 18, 2026 •

edited

Loading