Frequently Asked Questions

What does MINT do?

MINT is a modular laboratory platform. It manages projects, experiments, and users, and hosts a marketplace of plugins that add domain-specific capabilities — LC-MS sequence design, drug-response prediction, chemical drawing, plate-map editing, and so on. The platform itself is intentionally small; the lab-specific value lives in plugins.

Who is MINT for?

• Researchers and lab scientists running and reviewing experiments
• Lab admins managing users, plugins, and platform settings
• Plugin developers extending the platform with new domain-specific tools

It's especially well-suited to wet-lab teams that want a single browser-based home for project tracking, experiment metadata, and analysis workflows — without each tool living on a different server with a different login.

What was MLD?

MLD was the original name (Morscher Laboratory Database). It was rebranded to MINT — Mass-spec INtegrated Toolkit — alongside the v1.0.0 release. The legacy mld-sdk and @morscherlab/mld-sdk packages are frozen on their respective registries; new releases ship as mint-sdk and @morscherlab/mint-sdk. The CLI binary is mint, env vars use the MINT_ prefix. See the rebrand decision.

How does MINT relate to LEAF?

LEAF is one of the analysis tools that runs as a plugin under MINT (in addition to running as a standalone desktop app). MINT provides the project / experiment / user / marketplace layer; LEAF provides LC-MS metabolomics extraction, peak picking, and visualization. Many other plugins exist alongside LEAF.

Where does my data go?

Self-managed install (direct or Docker, on a Linux server): Data lives on your server — relational data in Postgres (recommended) or SQLite, files under plugins.dataDir. MINT itself makes outbound network requests only to the marketplace registry and (optionally) the GitHub release feed for updates.

Hosted (mint.morscherlab.org): Data resides on the lab server. Access is governed by the same RBAC controls as any other deployment.

There is intentionally no desktop / single-user install path: MINT is a multi-user platform and assumes a server context.

Do plugins isolate from each other?

Yes — when needed. The plugin loader checks each plugin's dependencies against everything already installed; if there's a clash, the plugin runs in its own uv-managed venv, in a separate subprocess that the platform proxies HTTP to. Otherwise plugins share the platform's environment for efficiency. Either way, plugin crashes don't take down the platform: middleware wraps every plugin call with error isolation.

Can I migrate from MLD to MINT?

Yes — the rebrand is name-only at the data level. Existing MLD installations upgrade in place: the database schema is identical, plugins built against mld-sdk continue to work during a grace period, and MLD_* environment variables remain honored alongside the new MINT_* ones. Plugin authors are encouraged to re-publish against mint-sdk at their next release. The migration plan is at decisions/2026-04-30-mld-to-mint-rebrand.md.

What database backends are supported?

Mode	When
none (file-based)	Single-user, no concurrency, evaluation only
sqlite	Single-server, modest team
postgresql	Recommended for shared deployments. Required for HA / multi-replica because plugin migrations rely on Postgres advisory locks.

How big a deployment can MINT handle?

Single-process MINT comfortably serves dozens of concurrent users with a handful of plugins. For larger labs, run multiple MINT replicas behind a load balancer with a shared Postgres — the advisory-lock-aware migration runner is built for that.

How do I back up MINT?

Two layers:

1. Database — standard pg_dump / pg_dumpall (Postgres) or file copy (SQLite, when MINT is stopped).
2. Filesystem — plugins.dataDir for plugin artifacts. The platform doesn't store anything outside the database and that directory.

snapshot.py keeps short-lived rollback snapshots for plugin upgrades, but those aren't a backup substitute — they're a local rollback aid.

Can I write a plugin in something other than Python?

The plugin contract is a FastAPI app + entry point in the mld.plugins group, so the plugin process itself must be Python. The plugin can shell out to native binaries, call other languages over IPC, or do anything else inside that process — but the platform-facing surface is Python + FastAPI.

The frontend half is Vue 3, but it's optional: a backend-only plugin (e.g., a webhook receiver) doesn't need a frontend.

How do I update MINT?

# uv
uv tool upgrade mint

# pip
pip install --user --upgrade mint

# pipx
pipx upgrade mint

For self-hosted deployments, use Admin → Updates to run the upgrade in-place with rollback support. See Updates.

Is MINT open source?

Yes. The source lives at github.com/MorscherLab/mld (the repo retains the historical name; the package and CLI are now mint). Issues, pull requests, and questions are welcome.

How do I cite MINT in a paper?

A citable preprint / DOI is forthcoming. For now, please cite the GitHub repository and the MINT version you used.

Where can I report bugs or request features?

GitHub issues — include your MINT version, OS, the affected plugin (if any), and steps to reproduce. The structured-log request ID from the failing response, if available, is especially helpful.