data tools · canvases · semantic SQL
Ryan Robitaille
I build data tools: visual canvases, flow systems, and SQL that understands what you mean.
Data work since 1999. BI and Tableau Zen Master in 2012, internal data UIs and two patents at Facebook, then Tesla and Airbnb. Putting LLMs on canvases since early 2023, with tool use wired in before function calling existed, and inside SQL since. Independent since leaving Airbnb in June 2023.
01 record
- Jun 2023 – now Independent Research & consulting RVBBIT, Semantic SQL, Calliope in production. This site.
- Aug 2021 – Jun 2023 Airbnb Senior Staff Business Intelligence Engineer Left June 2023. Officially Rabbit Season.
- Nov 2020 – Aug 2021 Airbnb Business Intelligence Engineer (contract) Contract role, Nov 2020 to Aug 2021.
- Jun 2019 – Nov 2020≈ Independent Data Eng & Data UI consulting Remote gigs, a hire-me page, and Rabbit in the evenings.
- Dec 2018 – Jun 2019 Tesla Data Engineer (Sr Staff) / Manager A short, fascinating stint.
- Jan 2016 – Jun 2018 Facebook Data Engineering Manager Led a mixed Data Eng / SWE team building internal data tools for the GMS data org: component-based app building, data viz, live coding.
- Jun 2014 – Jun 2016 Facebook Data Engineer Built a prototype data UI for central BI; two patents came out of this era.
- Jan 2014 – Jun 2014 PRO Unlimited (at Facebook) BI Engineer Contractor at Facebook via PRO Unlimited.
- Nov 2011 – Jan 2014 Linium Director of Data Services Reporting, data integration, BI. The Tableau years. Zen Master 2012.
- Jan 2009 – Nov 2011 Ryrobes Consulting Solutions Consultant / Owner Overlapped DCJS. "I solve problems. I do things my own way."
- Aug 2006 – Dec 2010 New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services ITS Programmer / Evil Genius Custom data-gathering that cleaned up NYS criminal history records.
- 2004 – Aug 2006 Colwell & Salmon Programmer / System & Network Admin Sysadmin, network admin, telco admin.
- 1999 – 2004 Linium Systems Engineer First run. Five years.
patents
- One live workspace over many data sources Reaches many databases through one shared access layer, then lets you query, chart, publish and embed the results in a single live workspace, where charts update in real time and their generated code can be edited by hand. Official title: Systems & methods for performing operations with data acquired from multiple sources
- Automatic chart recommendations for any dataset Checks a dataset's fields against a library of chart templates (by data type and cardinality), ranks the candidates by past user choices or an ML model, and shows as many top picks as fit on screen. Official title: Systems and methods for automated data visualization recommendations
honors
- Outstanding Work, DHS / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 2010
- Tableau Zen Master, Tableau Software 2012
- Tableau Conference keynote stage 2014
02 work
Shipping now
- shipping2024–now Calliope A company-brain appliance: a BI SWAT team with memory, the same brain in chat, desktop and agents. Built on RVBBIT and DataRabbit. calliopeatwork.com ↗
-
shipping2018–now
DataRabbit
Began as Rabbit, an internal data tool I built at Facebook (2015–17). Rebuilt from 2018 as a live-coding canvas. Now the SQL and operations console in the Calliope stack.
datarabbit.com ↗
- shipping2026–now rvbbit.ai AI primitives as planner-visible operators inside Postgres. Route, receipt, time-travel. Worst case, it's just Postgres. rvbbit.ai ↗
-
shipping2026–now
LARS / LarsQL
"AI that speaks SQL." WHERE description MEANS 'urgent customer issue': the model works as an operator inside SQL.
larsql.com ↗
The canvas lineage, 2015–2023
- archive2023–2025 RVBBIT: Dynamic Datascapes If Superset, Tableau and Emacs had a baby behind Bret Victor's tool shed.
-
archive2023
Rabbit Remix
A 2023 flow-based canvas for OpenAI endpoints. Canvas agents were using tools via sub-flows before OpenAI shipped function calling. Kept here as an archive.
-
archive2022–2024
CanvaSQL
A spatial SQL workspace. Query, viz, filter and dashboard share one board instead of being separate modes.
-
archive2023–2024
Flowmaps
A map-based Clojure DSL for core.async flows, with a time-scrubbing debugger UI.
Side quests
- side project2026 riffbank Fuzzy riff-shape search over a ~200M-note guitar tab corpus. Paste a riff, find where else it's played. Uses a canvas tab renderer written from scratch.
-
side project2023
Tableau Flow Maps
Shows the spaghetti of Tableau dashboard actions as a graph.
- side project2026 Backflow tester directories 24 static city directories of approved backflow testers (serviceanswersnow.com), built from public lists. serviceanswersnow.com ↗
- side project2025–2026 Rabbitize Playwright as a live, stateful REST service, with video, screenshots and DOM captured for every step.
- side project2025 Cheshire SQL to ANSI charts in the terminal, with a suggestion engine and tmux dashboards.
- side project2025–2026 Omarchy auto-themer A random wallpaper goes in and a full OS theme comes out.
03 writing
- The First Time Business Intelligence Felt Intelligent
- The Shape of a Question: Teaching SQL to Understand Intent
- Sometimes the art is the journey - Data Rabbit to Flowmaps
- Flowmaps - Mapping Clojure core.async Flows Through Time & Space
- The Color & Shape of Data: Living Maps, Direct Manipulation, the Code Canvas
- Quick "Hackathon" Release - Tableau Flow Maps