Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard lets AI agents run labs and factories
Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
Anthropic has opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a specification that lets AI agents operate physical devices like microscopes, liquid handlers, and robotic arms. Developed with HHMI Janelia, MHS reduces hardware integration from weeks to minutes, enabling autonomous experiments and real-time adjustments. Partners like Genentech, UW, and QuEra report faster workflows and improved reliability, such as a 99.3% laser lock recovery rate. MHS is model-agnostic and works with any programmable device, with plans to open-source it later.
The agent developed a controller that recovers the laser’s “lock”—the ultra-precise frequency the lasers must hold to interact with the atoms—99.3% of the time without human intervention.
- sinab
The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces.
But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later.
Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need permission to read a standard.
- mips_avatar
As far as I can tell is these standards (MCP/MHS/etc) are just semi obvious tool inferfaces that Anthropic uses as training scenarios.
- jauntywundrkind
MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years.
They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care much about protocols until they have to (MCP's incredibly long redemption ark). The vibes are all off.
Maybe they avoid laying their own pitfalls this time. Maybe it's better. It'd be nice to start seeing some kind of cause to trust this company as vaguely capable computer-using people. But so far that hasn't been the case.
- dgellow
It’s actually really cool, and not just for AI. That should make it easy to automate some processes with simple scripts.
Nitpick: it’s annoying that they add Model to those acronyms, for what seems like a fairly universal software interface
- Animats
How does this compare to ROS 2? Roughly the same goals.