A shared interface for laboratory equipment

Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard exposes laboratory instruments through standardized drivers and descriptive tags, giving agents a consistent way to discover capabilities, inspect state and issue commands through MCP, a command line or code.

Developed initially with HHMI Janelia, the August research preview describes a microscopy setup that previously required seven vendor programs. In a reported test, six induced equipment faults—including a missing plate and an active emergency stop—were blocked before movement.

One experiment had Claude learn a laser-alignment procedure through observation and turn it into a script. Subsequent execution could use that program without fresh model reasoning at every step.

These are pilot results, not a demonstration that arbitrary laboratory automation is safe. The standard was still in research preview, with wider open-source availability ahead. The contribution is a reusable interface between an agent’s plan and equipment whose state and operating limits must remain explicit.