Our vision for bricks is an open and accessible content library. Version 1.1.0 of bricks offers some improvements to its accessibility, both from an open-source standpoint, but also when it comes to the integration into refinery. We’ve added a sidebar for easier navigation, badges for GDPR-compliance as well as the option to get the source code for every brick in a regular Python format.

Addition of regular Python code

Previously, the code snippets that we offered on bricks were made on the basis of input from the Python library spaCy. We did this because we use spaCy as the tokenizer in refinery. With the new version of bricks, we also offer a “regular” code snippet as well, which can simply be copied and executed in any Python script or Notebook without the need to input a spaCy document. We hope this will make the existing modules even more useful for our community.

The new version of bricks also includes a sidebar, which can be used to filter and select bricks based on their functionality. Previously, we displayed all modules and users had to either search for their names or manually click through the pages to find the modules they were looking for. The navigation bar uses a new grouping system which we have implemented under the hood of bricks.

GDPR badges

The frontend of bricks now includes a small icon that indicates if a brick is GDPR compliant or not. At the time of writing, most modules are GDPR compliant and usable without concern. We strive to only offer brick modules that meet certain criteria of safety and security. When it comes to bricks that use popular APIs like the one from OpenAI however, we cannot guarantee data privacy and want to clearly express that in our design.

The GDPR status of a brick is displayed by either a blue or a red shield icon, where blue indicates that the brick is GDPR compliant.