LabMCP: Let AI Assistants Run Your Lab Instruments

LabMCP lets an AI assistant such as Claude operate your laboratory instruments. You describe what you want in plain language, and the assistant weighs, heats, stirs, pumps, measures and logs for you. It stays inside safety limits you set, keeps a record of every command, and has a practice mode that needs no hardware.

It supports balances, hotplate stirrers, syringe pumps, spectrometers, mass spectrometers, potentiostats, lock-in amplifiers, temperature controllers, vacuum gauges, flow controllers, biosensors, clinical analyzers and more. You don't need to know how to program. Setup means installing one free helper program and pasting a few lines into your AI app's settings.

Free and open source, built by K-Dense.

You:        Tare the balance, then heat the stirrer to 60 °C at 400 rpm and log the pH every
            30 s until it's stable. Tell me when to add the reagent.

Assistant:  [tares the balance → sets stirring to 400 rpm → sets heating to 60 °C → logs pH …]
            "pH has been 7.41 ± 0.01 for 3 minutes. Ready for the reagent."

⭐ Help other scientists find this. If LabMCP is useful to you, please star the repo.

📋 Contents

• How it works
• Try it in 10 minutes (no instrument needed)
• Supported instruments
• Connect your real instrument
• Safety
• What every connector includes
• Example requests
• FAQ
• Contributing
• Roadmap

💡 How it works

  You  ──type──▶  AI app  ──▶  LabMCP connector  ──USB / serial / network cable──▶  Instrument
                 (Claude,       (runs on the computer
                  Cursor, …)     attached to the instrument)

• The AI app is where you type requests, e.g. Claude Desktop.
• A LabMCP connector is a small program that knows one family of instruments and its command language, so the AI never has to guess it. You add one connector per type of instrument. (Technically these are MCP servers, which is the term you'll see in the tables and docs.)
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that lets AI apps plug into tools like these. Think of it as USB for AI.
• The AI can only use the actions a connector offers, like "tare", "set temperature" or "read pH". In the docs these actions are called tools. The connector checks every request against your limits and refuses anything unsafe before it reaches the instrument.

🚀 Try it in 10 minutes (no instrument needed)

Each connector has a practice mode (a simulator) that behaves like the real instrument and gives realistic replies. Nothing is connected, so nothing can go wrong.

You need: a Mac, Windows or Linux computer, and an AI app that supports MCP. Claude Desktop is the easiest place to start.

Step 1: Install uv (once)

uv is a free tool that downloads and runs LabMCP for you. Open a terminal:

• Mac: press ⌘ Space, type Terminal, press Enter.
• Windows: open the Start menu, type PowerShell, press Enter.

Paste the line for your system and press Enter:

# Mac or Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Close the terminal and open it again so it finds the new program.

Step 2: Add a practice balance to your AI app

In Claude Desktop, go to Settings → Developer → Edit Config. This opens a file called claude_desktop_config.json. Paste the following into it and save. If the file already has an "mcpServers" section, add only the "balance" line inside it.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "balance": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["labmcp-mettler-toledo", "--simulate"] }
  }
}

Quit Claude Desktop completely, then reopen it.

Mac tip: if Claude reports that it can't find uvx, run which uvx in Terminal and replace "uvx" in the file with the full path it prints (usually /Users/<your-name>/.local/bin/uvx).

Using a different app? For Claude Code, run claude mcp add balance -- uvx labmcp-mettler-toledo --simulate in a terminal. For Cursor, VS Code, Codex and Windsurf, see docs/clients.md.

Step 3: Ask

"What instrument is connected? Tare it, then log the weight every second for 10 seconds."

The first request can take a minute while the connector downloads. Your AI app will usually ask your permission before it takes an action. Say yes.

Want a whole lab? examples/ sets up six practice instruments at once (balance, stirrer, pH probe, syringe pump, potentiostat and spectrometer).

📦 Supported instruments

Find your instrument below and click its name. Each page covers the settings to change on the instrument itself, the safety limits you can set, and everything the AI can do with it.

Reading the tables:

• Interface is the cable or connection the instrument uses.
• Tools is how many different actions the AI can take.
• Install is the name to put in your AI app's settings (the part after uvx).
• Status: 🧪 simulated means built from the manufacturer's published manual and tested thoroughly in practice mode, but not yet confirmed on a real instrument by a user. ✅ hardware-verified means someone has confirmed it on the real instrument. If you own one of these instruments, you can help verify it. No coding needed.

🧬 Biology & Life Sciences

⚗️ Chemistry