Project
Abstraction Drivers for Scientific Instruments
Project Brief
quail-cli-core is a kit for building abstraction-layer drivers that let AI agents operate scientific instruments with an API. Its design is aligned with the Model Hardware Standard (MHS). All drivers share five commands, so an agent that has used one driver already knows how to command any other.
Project Tech Stack
Approach
Each driver's capabilities command declares what the instrument can read, write, and do, along with its safety metadata. get, set, ramp, and act then carry out those operations, with JSON output by default.
Its core commands map directly onto the MHS driver. MHS read and write correspond to get and set, and the MHS device reference file corresponds to capabilities.
A scaffold starts each new driver, and a conformance checker verifies the finished driver against the contract. Enforcing each instrument's safety limits is the job of the driver and the agent harness. quailbot keeps every state-changing call locked until the operator enables it.
nspmctl, the Nanonis driver behind the agentic STM experiments, is the reference implementation.
Outcome
Adding a new instrument means writing one driver, not rebuilding the agent's tools.