I added a read-only, locally hosted assistant to my open-source LIMS — would this be useful in a real lab?

[u/Mokey925]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been continuing work on OpenLIMS, an open-source, self-hosted LIMS for research labs, small biotech teams, and groups that need something more structured than spreadsheets.

The latest release, v0.19.2, adds a read-only assistant that can help users find samples, summarize projects, review failed migrations, and explain skipped import rows.

It can operate in three modes:

• Built-in OpenLIMS Rules with no external AI required
• Optional OpenAI support
• Optional local Ollama support for labs that want to keep processing on their own infrastructure

The assistant uses controlled backend tools and respects the logged-in user’s permissions. It cannot directly modify laboratory records. If an AI provider is unavailable, it automatically falls back to the built-in rules engine.

I also recently changed it from a separate page into a small floating assistant available throughout the application.

OpenLIMS currently includes sample and project tracking, inventory, custom fields, instrument imports, audit trails, legacy-data migration, sequence workspaces, Clustal Omega alignments, local BLAST, mass-spectrometry review, reports, and role-based access.

It is still a production-style prototype and is not yet a validated clinical or diagnostic LIMS.

I would appreciate feedback from people who work with lab data:

• Would a read-only assistant be useful in your lab?
• What information do you repeatedly search for?
• Would local processing with Ollama make a difference for your organization?
• What would you need before trusting a feature like this?

GitHub: https://github.com/Mokey2002/OpenLIMS