View source for LabChat

{{Short description|Chat beside Molecular Reality's live laboratory stream}}
{{Infobox software
| name = LabChat
| developer = [[Molecular Reality Corporation]]
| released = June 2026
| programming_language = JavaScript, Python
| operating_system = Web browser
| genre = Web chat
}}
'''LabChat''' is the text chat that runs beside the live current trace on the stream page of [[Molecular Reality Corporation]]'s website, the [[live molecular stream]]. Members who are signed in can type into it. Visitors can read the conversation, and the box in front of them says "Sign in to chat".<ref name="stream">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/streaming |title=Live Streaming |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>

The company's field guide offers it as one of "Two ways, both real" of talking to the laboratory, the other being a telephone line: "A human reads it when a human is at the bench, which is often, and the chat stays friendly because the people there are curious about the same things you are. Ask your question. The worst that happens is the instrument answers instead."<ref name="faq">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/FAQ |title=Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=August 2026}}</ref>

== Features ==
LabChat sits in a panel under the trace that can be collapsed out of the way, and the page asks the server for new messages every two seconds.<ref name="stream" /> Each message shows the sender's display name and picture: the member's own photograph, or else one of the [[Default avatars of EQBio-OS|default portraits]] of animals that the members' software hands out, or, failing both, a drawn face generated from the member's account number. Two of the company's characters have pictures reserved for them. Messages from the company's own account signed "Keltar" appear beside his forward-facing photograph, and those signed "Maxine" beside her neutral pose.<ref name="records" /> A signed-in member sees "Say something..." in the box, which accepts 160 characters. The server behind it would accept 500. It refuses a second message sent by the same member within one second, with the response "Slow down".<ref name="records">{{cite web |title=Company records |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=October 2026}}</ref>

A microphone button next to the box sends speech to the company's speech-recognition service and posts the transcript as a message. Messages can also be attached to a recording as annotations. When the operator changes the sample, pore or flow cell in use, the change is posted to the chat as a note, so that the conversation doubles as a laboratory notebook; a comment in the code says as much: "chat acts as lab notebook".<ref name="records" />

Messages from the instrument relay itself are kept out. A comment beside the code that handles them reads: "console only, never spam LabChat (Kent #9)".{{efn|The comment uses a dash where this quotation has a comma. The company's founder is [[Kent Kemmish]].}}<ref name="records" />

== History ==
Since it went up in June 2026, the stream page has been rearranged several times. The first line of its script still describes the original layout, with the amplifier's display filling the screen and "Chat + cams panel left". The cameras moved to small windows over the trace on June 8, the chat became a transparent strip across the bottom of the data, and in the current layout it is a section of its own beneath the trace.<ref name="records" />

== In the archive ==
Each recording in the [[Streams archive]] keeps the chat that ran beside it. The archive's viewer has a "Chat Replay" panel, which shows the messages sent while the recording was made, together with any annotations added to that recording afterward.<ref name="streams">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/streams |title=Streams |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>

== Elsewhere ==
In the members' software, [[EQBio-OS]], LabChat is the destination of the posters of the [[Character classes of Epic Quest Bio|character classes]]: clicking a class poster opens the chat with the class name and "question:" already typed, as in "ByteBender question:".<ref name="records" />

== See also ==
* [[Camtest]]
* [[Molecular Streaming Corps]]
* [[Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality]]

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{Molecular Reality}}

[[Category:Live molecular stream]]
[[Category:Online chat]]