Interactive dry-runs/introspection?

[KevinHQChen]

I've used gptel for a bit in org mode and it's great, but I'd like to know exactly what gets sent as the prompt. Right now it seems like the only way to be sure what is sent is to explicitly select a region. In the readme, it states there's support for "introspection, so you can see exactly what will be sent. Inspect and modify queries before sending them". I then found the function gptel--inspect-query, but it's not interactive, so I'm not sure if this is what I should be using or if there's another way I'm missing?

[karthink]

Yes, turn on gptel's expert commands with (setq gptel-expert-commands t). Then you'll find dry-run options in the transient menu. You can view the payload to be sent as Lisp or JSON, and edit it in place and resume the request if you'd like.

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it's a mature feature but a little under-documented at the moment because the "correct" way to present the UI for this feature also puts the onus on me to educate users on transient levels. If you don't mind, could I ask you a question? Are you aware of transient-levels, a feature available in every transient menu?

[KevinHQChen]

Thanks for the fast response, works perfectly!

No I was not aware of transient levels, or even the transient package itself. I only recently started using vanilla emacs (after using doom emacs for a few years) and it's motivating me to dig deeper into the emacs way of doing things. I'll check out transient, seems like a good way to do TUIs in emacs.

[karthink]

You can set transient's "level" for each command in the menu by pressing C-x l when a transient is active. The correct way to display these dry-run commands would be to use a different default level for them, but as you can see users are more familiar with the idea of setting a variable to enable hidden commands than they are with transient's levels system. Hence the dilemma.

[KevinHQChen]

I can see how transient levels would reduce menu complexity. I think as a novice user it would be nice to indicate generally the existence of useful commands under C-x (like Save or transient levels). My first thought when looking for something that's not there was to hit ?, which wasn't very helpful here.

[karthink]

I think as a novice user it would be nice to indicate generally the existence of useful commands under C-x (like Save or transient levels). My first thought when looking for something that's not there was to hit ?, which wasn't very helpful here.

This is a transient setting, and I can't control it in gptel. Try using C-x t when in any transient menu, including gptel-menu.