Scientific Instrument Driver Kit / quail-cli-core

Project Brief

quail-cli-core is a driver framework and scaffold that turns heterogeneous instrument backends into a shared five-command CLI surface: capabilities, get, set, ramp, and act. It gives higher layers a reusable interface contract and conformance path instead of bespoke orchestration logic for every new device.

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Project Tech Stack

Core: Python driver framework · CLI contract runtime
Interfaces: capabilities/get/set/ramp/act · JSON payloads · exit codes
Artifacts: conformance checks · scaffold generator · contract docs

Approach

The package freezes a small but explicit control surface — capabilities, get, set, ramp, and act — so every compatible driver exposes the same machine-readable behavior even when the backend library differs.

Conformance checks verify that command payloads, error envelopes, and safety semantics match the contract, which makes the interface layer auditable instead of merely documented.

Bootstrap tooling and reference scaffolds make new driver onboarding a repeatable integration step rather than a custom orchestration project for each instrument.

Outcome

quail-cli-core makes the interface layer reusable: new instruments can enter the control stack through a shared CLI contract, verified behavior, and scaffolded driver setup.