Determine if we're in an IPython notebook session

is_kernel.py

import sys

def is_kernel():
    """
    Determine if we're in an IPython notebook session
    Source: Source: http://stackoverflow.com/a/34092072
    -------------------------------------------------
    You can't detect that the frontend is a notebook with perfect precision, 
    because an IPython Kernel can have one or more different Jupyter frontends 
    with different capabilities (terminal console, qtconsole, notebook, etc.). 
    You can, however, identify that it is a Kernel and not plain terminal IPython.
    """
    if 'IPython' not in sys.modules:
        # IPython hasn't been imported, definitely not
        return False
    from IPython import get_ipython
    # check for `kernel` attribute on the IPython instance
    return getattr(get_ipython(), 'kernel', None) is not None