Edna is the AI assistant built into Labsistant. You can ask about your inventory in plain language instead of building a search, and Edna can draft changes for you to approve. It is one part of what the app does rather than a separate product, and it only ever works from your own lab's records.
Edna needs the Team plan or higher.
Opening it
- Click Edna in the sidebar.
- Or use the Open Edna button that floats in the corner of most pages.
New chat starts a fresh conversation.
What you can ask
Edna reads your lab's inventory, samples, experiments, and storage. Useful questions are the ones that would otherwise take several filters:
- What is running low?
- What expires in the next month?
- Where is a particular reagent stored?
- Which lots of something do we have, and how much of each?
- What is scheduled this week?
Ask in your own words. You do not need particular phrasing.
The rule that matters: propose, then confirm
Edna never changes anything on its own. When you ask for something that would alter your inventory, it does not act. It shows you a confirmation card describing exactly what it proposes to do, and waits.
Nothing happens until you approve that card. You can also dismiss it, and nothing is changed.
This is not a setting you can turn off, and it is not a caution the app relaxes once it trusts you. Every single change goes through your explicit confirmation, every time.
The confirmation card shows the actual values, not a summary, so read it as you would read a form. It is editable, so if Edna got a field slightly wrong you can fix it on the card rather than starting the request again.
After you approve, you get a plain result: the change was applied, or it could not be completed.
Two separate permissions
There are two independent gates, and it helps to know which is which:
- Asking questions is available whenever your plan includes Edna.
- Making changes additionally requires a per-lab switch that only a PI can turn on.
So Edna answering your questions but never offering to change anything is the expected behaviour when that switch is off. See Let Edna make changes and attach files.
Even with the switch on, the confirmation step above still applies to every change.
What Edna will not do
No lab-science advice. Edna answers questions about your inventory and about using Labsistant. It will not tell you whether a reagent is safe to use, whether a protocol is sound, how to handle a hazardous material, or what an expired substance can still be used for. Ask it a science question and it will decline and say so.
That boundary is deliberate. An inventory assistant that confidently improvises safety guidance would be worse than no assistant.
No invented values. Edna will not make up a lot number, CAS number, hazard level, or expiry date to fill a gap. If something required is missing, the confirmation card asks you for it. See Lot numbers, CAS, hazard and expiration.
Current state only. Edna answers from your inventory as it stands now.
It can be wrong
Edna uses a third-party AI provider and can make mistakes.
This is exactly why the confirmation card exists. Treat what Edna proposes as a draft from a helpful colleague who is usually right: worth reading before you sign it.
Your data
The app states that your questions and data are never used to train AI models, with a "Learn more" link under the chat box for the details. Read that if you need the specifics for your institution.