Hey everyone!
Small quality-of-life improvement that a few of you asked for directly: you can now specify a JSON type in the output of AI columns.
This one came straight from Makers in the community who need AI columns to return JSON so they can manipulate it in later steps—filtering, mapping, feeding it into other automations, and so on. If that’s you, this makes AI columns a lot more dependable.
What it does
The new option does two things under the hood:
- An explicit JSON output type. Selecting it tells the AI to reply in JSON and follow the instructions you’ve provided, rather than free-form text.
- A built-in validity check. Once the column runs and generates a value, we check whether the response is valid JSON. If it isn’t, we automatically send a second prompt to correct the output—a simple way to improve adherence to the structure you requested.
Why it matters
Getting an LLM to reliably return well-formed JSON is usually the hard part. By making JSON a first-class output type and adding an automatic fix-up step, AI columns now give you structured data you can actually build on—no manual cleanup, no brittle workarounds.
Give it a try, and let us know what you’re using it for.
Max