Open Laboratory Docs
FAQ

FAQ

General

What exactly is Open Laboratory?

Open Laboratory is a Docker container that turns any machine into a browser-accessible AI workstation. It includes a desktop environment, an app manager for open-source AI tools, a model library, and a browser terminal — all accessible remotely via a secure tunnel without any network configuration.

Is there a managed cloud option?

No. Open Laboratory is self-hosted software. You run the container on your own hardware or cloud account. We provide the software, tunnel infrastructure, and model library — you provide the compute.

What hardware do I need?

Any machine that runs Docker. For AI workloads, an NVIDIA GPU is strongly recommended. The minimum useful setup is a GPU with 8 GB of VRAM. CPU-only works for LLM inference (slowly) but is impractical for image generation.

Does it work on AMD GPUs or Apple Silicon?

AMD ROCm support and Apple Silicon (Metal) support are on the roadmap. Currently only NVIDIA GPUs are supported for accelerated inference.

Accounts

Do I need an account?

Yes. The container connects through an Open Laboratory account key. Accounts are free — create one at openlaboratory.com and copy your account key from the dashboard.

Can I use one account key on multiple machines?

Each running lab gets its own subdomain under your account. Running several containers with the same account key is fine — each registers as a separate laboratory in your dashboard.

What happens if I lose my internet connection while the container is running?

The container keeps running locally. The tunnel will reconnect automatically when connectivity is restored. Apps running inside the container are unaffected during a brief disconnection.

Access and Security

How does the tunnel work?

When the container starts, it opens an outbound connection to Open Laboratory’s tunnel servers. Traffic to your *.tunnels.laboratory.computer subdomains is forwarded through this connection to your container. No inbound ports need to be open — the tunnel is initiated from your side.

Who can access my instance?

Only you. The managed edge requires sign-in with your Open Laboratory account before any request reaches your lab — visitors who aren’t signed into your account are rejected at the edge. There’s no shared token to copy or leak.

Do I need to manage an access token?

No. Access is your Open Laboratory account sign-in, handled at the edge. Apps you publish can be left public or protected with their own access tokens, managed from inside the lab’s app network panel.

How do I revoke access?

Revoke the account key from your dashboard at openlaboratory.com; a revoked key can no longer establish a tunnel. Signing out of your Open Laboratory account ends edge access from that browser.

Is traffic encrypted?

Yes. All traffic to *.tunnels.laboratory.computer is served over HTTPS with TLS certificates managed by Open Laboratory. The tunnel connection from your container to our infrastructure is also encrypted.

Networking

Do I need to open any ports?

No. The tunnel uses an outbound connection, so no inbound ports need to be open on the container host. This works behind NAT, home routers, corporate firewalls, and cloud security groups with all inbound rules blocked.

Can I use a custom domain?

Not currently. All instances use the {slug}.tunnels.laboratory.computer subdomain format. Custom domain support is on the roadmap.

Container and Data

How do I update Open Laboratory?

Pull the latest image and recreate the container:

docker pull openlaboratoryorg/laboratory-os
docker stop <container-name>
docker rm <container-name>
docker run --gpus all \
  -e UPLINK_API_KEY='your-account-key' \
  openlaboratoryorg/laboratory-os

Support

How do I get help?