lab-hardware-cad

A parametric computer-aided design workflow for custom laboratory hardware, using Python-based build123d models. It exports STEP, STL, and DXF files for fabrication and checks the design numerically and visually.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design microfluidic chips, molds, mounts, adapters, holders, racks, fixtures, enclosures, and similar lab parts, or to inspect and modify an existing STEP file.
Why use it?
It helps prevent fit and dimension errors when a part must mate with existing lab equipment or follow a published standard. The authoritative design is kept as editable parameters before fabrication.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills/lab-hardware-cad
Any agent
npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill lab-hardware-cad
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 106 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,094 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00106 $0.05094
Opus 5 $0.00053 $0.02547
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.01019
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00509

Measured yesterday against content hash b89d796cfc8e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

lab-hardware-cad scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 4 executable files (scripts/_common.py, scripts/check.py, scripts/gen.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/lab-hardware-cad/SKILL.md · 373 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 373 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Lab Hardware CAD

Design physical research hardware as parametric Python source, export STEP as the authoritative artifact, and verify the result both numerically and visually before anything is fabricated.

The hard part of lab hardware is almost never the geometry. It is that the part must mate with equipment whose dimensions are fixed by a published standard or a vendor drawing. A holder that is 0.5 mm too wide does not fit the plate reader; a channel with the wrong aspect ratio collapses during bonding; a mount whose bolt pattern is 25.4 mm instead of 25.0 mm will not reach the optical table. This skill exists to keep those numbers correct and checked.

When to use

Use for any request to design, model, or fabricate a physical part for a lab: chip, mold, mount, adapter, holder, rack, bracket, enclosure, jig, fixture, arena, or maze. Also use to inspect or modify an existing STEP file.

Do not use for finite-element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, molecular structure, or scientific plotting. Those are different skills.

Setup

uv venv --python 3.12 .venv-labcad
uv pip install --python .venv-labcad/bin/python "build123d==0.11.1" "matplotlib>=3.8"

build123d 0.11.1 requires Python >=3.10,<3.15 and pulls in the OpenCascade kernel through cadquery-ocp-novtk. The wheel is large; install once per project and reuse it.

All bundled scripts take --help. check.py standards runs without build123d installed.

Model files are executed, not parsed. gen.py, check.py, and snapshot.py import a *_model.py and call its build(), which runs arbitrary Python in the current environment. That is inherent to parametric CAD — the source is the design. Only run model files authored in this session or supplied by the user from a trusted location. If a model came from the internet, a shared drive, or an untrusted colleague, read it before running it and say that you did.

Required workflow

Follow these steps in order. Steps 5 and 6 are not optional, and step 6 is not waived by step 5 passing.

Read the full file on GitHub · 373 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 373 lines · 106 tokens per session scan A b89d796cfc8e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

lab-hardware-cad is a skill published in the GitHub repository K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills (40,390 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 106 tokens to every session and 5,094 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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