Learning about Spotter versions
Each version of Spotter offers different features and capabilities. Later versions like Spotter 3 offer more in-depth insights into your data, and advanced analysis processes like forecasting and correlation analysis, at the trade-off of sharing more of your data with the underlying LLM. Learn more about which version of Spotter is right for your team.
Spotter 3
Spotter 3 introduces the capability to search on multiple sources, pull information from structured and unstructured sources, and reason and self-correct like a human analyst. In addition to the Search mode used in Spotter Classic and Spotter Agent, Spotter 3 includes a Research mode, which supports multilayered investigations. Instead of performing a single analysis to answer your query, it consumes a larger computational budget to perform a chain of thought– iteratively querying, validating, and cross-referencing– until it can solve broad prompts like “Diagnose the root cause of our Q3 revenue miss and suggest three recovery paths.”
Key capabilities:
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Data-awareness: Now securely reads the specific results of your query to write accurate insights and answer follow-up questions with full context.
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Insight storage and chat history: Generates insights from your data and stores them in ThoughtSpot Cloud as your conversation history with Spotter.
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Data security: Processes only the data needed to answer your question. Your data is sent to the LLM only to generate insights and is never stored or used for training.
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Analyst-grade reasoning: Creates a plan, validates assumptions, and self-corrects to provide you verifiable results.
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Narrative insights: Provides rich text summaries explaining why your data looks the way it does.
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Multi-turn conversation: You can ask follow-up questions, request explanations, and explore the "why" behind the numbers.
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Automatic Model selection: Identifies and queries across multiple data models at the same time and selects the most relevant data source(s) based on your question.
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Integrate your tools into Spotter: Integrate ThoughtSpot’s powerful agentic analytics capabilities into your own custom AI agents using the ThoughtSpot MCP server.
Spotter 2 (Spotter Agent)
Spotter Agent is designed to interact with your questions naturally, offering avenues for further explanation of your data. You can now ask questions about your data, such as “How many columns are in this Model?” Spotter Agent can suggest questions you can ask to improve your understanding of the data analysis, and you can ask Spotter to answer multiple questions at once. For questions resulting in a chart or table, you can drill down on the answer, include or exclude filters, exercise chart axis options like grouping axes or sorting, show underlying data, or use SpotIQ analyze.
With Spotter Agent, you can also ask questions about how calculated fields such as formulas are generated. Spotter Agent has also improved its responses for questions not related to the data model you selected.
Key capabilities:
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Proactive suggestions: Spotter Agent suggests next questions and analysis paths based on the data context.
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Explainability: You can ask Spotter Agent to explain how answers were calculated, including formulas and logic.
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Human-in-the-loop feedback: Analysts can coach Spotter by providing reference questions and business terms, improving answer accuracy over time.
Spotter 1 (Spotter Classic)
Spotter Classic is the original conversational analytics experience in ThoughtSpot. It enables you to ask business questions in natural language and receive instant answers and visualizations. You can drill down on any answer for deeper analysis. Spotter Classic operates primarily on metadata and schema-level information, without direct access to underlying data values unless explicitly enabled by the administrator.
Key capabilities:
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Conversational search: You can ask questions in natural language and get instant answers, including charts and tables.
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Drill anywhere: You can interact with visualizations, drilling down to finer levels of detail.
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Token-based search: Spotter Classic leverages ThoughtSpot’s relational search engine, translating questions into search tokens for precise, governed results.
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Human-in-the-loop feedback: Analysts can coach Spotter by providing reference questions and business terms, improving answer accuracy over time.
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Data governance: All answers are grounded in the governed semantic model, ensuring security and compliance.
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No direct data sharing with LLMs: By default, Spotter Classic does not share actual data values with large language models.
Typical use cases:
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Self-service analytics for business users who need quick, governed answers.
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Organizations with strict data privacy or residency requirements.
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Environments where only metadata-level access is permitted.
Spotter version comparison
| Feature | Spotter Classic (Spotter 1) | Spotter Agent (Spotter 2) | Spotter 3 |
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Release Status |
GA |
Early Access |
Early Access |
Data literacy |
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AI Insights (summaries) |
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Auto Mode (auto-select data model and search on multiple models) |
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Enabling and switching between versions
Administrators can choose the default Spotter experience (Classic, Agent, or Spotter 3) for the organization.
Spotter Agent and Spotter 3 can be enabled instance-wide or for specific users or groups, and data sharing with LLMs is always opt-in, respecting all security and compliance requirements.
Security and trust
In Spotter Classic, no data values are shared with LLMs; all analysis is based on metadata and governed models.
In Spotter Agent and Spotter 3, data is only shared with LLMs when explicitly enabled by admins. All data access is governed by user permissions, and ThoughtSpot maintains strict zero-retention and no-training contracts with LLM providers. Bring Your Own LLM Key is also supported for organizations with additional privacy needs.
When to use each version
Choose Spotter Classic if your organization requires strict data privacy, is in early stages of AI adoption, or only needs metadata-level insights.
Choose Spotter Agent if you want to unlock the next step for analytics, including richer insights, autonomous research, and advanced AI-driven features, while maintaining enterprise-grade governance and security.
Choose Spotter 3 for the full range of analysis capabilities, with an AI analyst that can reason, respond, and self-validate like a human analyst.
