Lesson 2 of 7
Why the report is text
An agent can't click around Power BI Desktop. It can read and write text, so the report has to be text too.
1Guess first
The same report can be saved two ways. Which one can a coding agent safely edit?
A saves the report as a folder of small text files. The agent works there. Desktop still does the one thing text can't: it the pages.
2Open the folder
Open three files to see what the agent actually works on.
report\
Report.Report\definition\pages\…\visuals\
Report.SemanticModel\definition\tables\
sample.pbix
Tap a file to open it.
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3The setting that wasn't there
A real surprise from the project: the agent looked for a setting in the seed and found nothing. Drag the slider to see why.
In Desktop: Format pane > General > Properties > Padding
Padding: 4 px (the theme says 4)
1,240
What Desktop writes to visual.json
So why did the agent find nothing?
4Two paddings
Two options are both called “padding”. Here is how Desktop wrote each one in the seed.
// Outer frame of the visual
"visualContainerObjects": { "padding": [{ "properties": {
"top": 8D } }] } // decimal, no selector
// Inner box of a card
"objects": { "padding": [{ "properties": {
"topMargin": 8L },
"selector": { … } }] } // integer, with a selector
The agent had only read the first one. What would it have done with the card's inner box?