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Roadmap

This page collects the larger pieces of work that are planned but not yet implemented, and general areas that we expect to work on in the future. It is a living document and is expected to be reorganised as priorities shift. Please open an issue or reach out on the datalab GitHub if you have a use case that depends on any of the items below, or that is not yet captured here. There are also several issues with the 'suggestions' label across our repositories, as well as 'epics' and 'plugin-requests'

Plugin system

The plugin entry points exposed today only cover data blocks. Planned extensions include:

  • Custom item types — register new top-level item models (beyond the built-in samples, cells, and starting materials) from a plugin package.
  • Ingestion hooks — allow plugins to register handlers that run on file upload, item creation, or other lifecycle events.
  • Webapp components — distribute Vue components alongside the Python plugin package so that custom blocks and item types can ship their own UI.

Other planned work

  • Enhancements to the base data block lifecycle for automating caching and export with less boilerplate.
  • Unification of approaches to automated data capture via remote filesystems and "Beholder".
  • Integration with robotic lab protocols: orchestration, execution and tracking.
  • Support for Rietveld refinement in the XRD block.
  • Standalone apps for certain measurement techniques that include multi-item comparisons.
  • Structured synthesis information.
  • Support for Microscopy data analysis and visualisation.