Coding agents have gotten really good at one kind of work. You scope a feature, edit some files, run the tests, ship it. It all happens on disk. But that is not how data work feels. You load something, you look at it, you run a cell, you watch how it responds, and you decide the next move from whatever is sitting in memory. And until now, your agent couldn't see any of that. It only saw the files. Never the live state.

This episode, that wall comes down. marimo pair drops a coding agent right inside a running notebook, with full access to every variable Python is holding in memory. The notebook becomes a shared canvas. You point, it runs the code. You tell it to zoom in on the Picasso paintings, and the chart just updates. No MCP tools to wire up, no schema to describe. Just Python, and an agent that can finally see what you see. Trevor Manz is back to walk us through it.

Episode sponsors

Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

marimo pair: marimo.io/pair

Course transcripts announcement: talkpython.fm/blog

anywidget: Jupyter Widgets made easy: talkpython.fm
marimo: marimo.io
blog: marimo.io
GitHub: github.com
given this: martinalderson.com
llms.txt: talkpython.fm
mcp: talkpython.fm
cli: talkpython.fm
open issues: github.com
Discord: marimo.io
Marimo Pair: marimo.io
OpenCode: opencode.ai
AI Tooling for Software Engineers in 2026: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com

Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #555 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/555
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm

Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong

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#555: Marimo Pair - A Canvas for Agent + Developers Collaboration

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#555: Marimo Pair - A Canvas for Agent + Developers Collaboration