Overview
auto/lab
Drive autonomous research from your terminal. Create a project, queue experiments, and attach GPUs as execution nodes. The agent writes code, runs jobs, and analyzes results; you stay in the loop.
curl -fsSL https://app.autolab.ai/install.sh | sh # installs the `autolab` CLI
autolab login # sign in (opens a browser)
autolab init # turn this repo into a project
autolab start # go live — the agent starts researching
autolab open # watch it in the browser dashboard
What is Autolab?¶
Autolab runs experiments for you. An LLM agent drives the research loop:
it proposes hypotheses, writes experiment code, schedules jobs across your
hardware, analyzes the results, and merges the improvements — autonomously. You
stay in the loop through two surfaces: this CLI, and the web
dashboard at app.autolab.ai — where run logs,
metrics, the agent's analysis, and a chat with the agent live. autolab open
takes you there from any project directory. See
CLI and dashboard.
The autolab CLI is the terminal gateway to all of it. It treats your workspace
like git: a project is your objective plus a baseline, an experiment is a
commit, and submit queues one. No server stack required — it's a slim client
that wraps the control node's API.
The mental model¶
you ─┬─ autolab CLI ─┐
│ ├─▶ Control Node (app.autolab.ai) ──▶ Execution Nodes
└─ browser ─────┘ the agent + queue + git repo your GPUs / machines
(dashboard)
- Control Node — hosted at app.autolab.ai. Home of the agent, the experiment queue, and the dashboard. It also serves each project's private git repo.
- Execution Nodes — any machine you attach with
autolab serve. They clone the project's code and run the experiments. Heterogeneous by design: connect a laptop, a workstation, or an 8×H100 box. - The CLI —
autolabon your machine. One binary to create projects, submit experiments, manage settings, and turn machines into execution nodes. - The dashboard — the same control node in your browser. Live run logs,
metrics, the agent's analysis and chat. Open it with
autolab open.
See Core concepts for how projects, experiments, and keys fit together.
Start here¶
-
Quickstart
From install to your first running experiment in five minutes.
-
CLI and dashboard
Where the browser UI is, what it shows the terminal doesn't, and which "log" is which.
-
Core concepts
Projects vs. experiments, the
commit == experimentmodel, and field locking. -
Run experiments
submitwith code, as an idea, or as a seed — plus diff, checkout, and logs. -
Execution nodes
Turn any machine — including a headless GPU box — into a runner with
serve. -
CLI reference
Every command, argument, and option — generated from the CLI itself.
-
Configuration
Hosts, profiles, environment variables, and the
.autolab/workspace. -
Use from Claude Code & Codex
autolab installteaches your coding agent to drive AutoLab for you.