Distillate — Orchestrate ML auto-research agents

Your research alchemist. Conjure ML experiments that run themselves. Distill insights from everything you read.

  distillate.dev

What is Distillate?

Distillate is an open-source research platform that orchestrates autonomous research agents. It turns your research questions into agents that run ML experiments, track results, and report what they find — while keeping your paper library organized with highlights and AI summaries.

At the center is Nicolas, your research alchemist. He spawns research agents that live in tmux sessions, iteratively improving your models and reporting results. He also tends the library — your paper collection, flowing from Zotero through any reading surface (reMarkable, iPad, desktop) into structured notes.

The core loop: read papers, run experiments, see them improve on the chart, distill what you learned, repeat. What you read informs what you try. What you try informs what you read next.

$ distillate

  ─── ⚗️  Nicolas ──────────────────────────────
  Your research alchemist.
  🧪 4 experiments · 12 runs · 1 running
  📚 42 papers read · 7 in queue

> /conjure tiny-matmul --duration 30m
  🧪 Spawning research agent...
  Created distillate-xp-tiny-matmul
  Research agent spawned — 30 min budget, will report when done.

> /distill tiny-matmul
  🔬 Distilling 8 runs...
  Best: run-7 (loss 0.0023, -42% from baseline)
  Key insight: block size 64 with gradient accumulation
  outperforms larger batches on this scale.

Skills

Nicolas responds to 9 skills organized across three roles:

The Laboratory 🧪

The Library 📚

Quick Start

Install

pip install distillate
# or
uv pip install distillate

Requirements

• Claude Code (claude CLI) — Distillate runs through your Claude Code subscription. No separate API key needed.
• Zotero — for paper management (optional if you only run experiments)

Launch

distillate          # Start the Nicolas REPL
distillate --init   # Run the setup wizard (first time)
distillate --sync   # Classic sync-only workflow

Or use the desktop app for a full IDE experience.

Desktop App

The Distillate desktop app provides an IDE-style layout with four tabs:

• Control Panel — metric chart, session timer, goal tracking, experiment overview
• Session — live terminal attached to the running Claude Code agent
• Results — runs grid with research insights (key breakthrough, lessons learned, dead ends)
• Prompt — view and edit PROMPT.md with markdown rendering

New users get one-click onboarding: launch a demo experiment from the sidebar, or connect your Zotero library from the papers panel. Context-aware suggestions in the chat adapt to what you're looking at — experiment-specific actions when viewing an experiment, paper-specific actions when viewing a paper.

The desktop app connects to the same backend as the CLI — everything stays in sync.

How It Works

The core research loop:

1. 📜 Add papers — Save papers to Zotero, read and highlight on any device. Nicolas extracts highlights, generates summaries, and builds your knowledge base.

2. ⚗️ Conjure experiments — Describe a research question or point at a paper. Nicolas drafts the prompt, sets up a git repo, and spawns an autonomous research agent to run it.

3. 🔬 Distill insights — As experiments run, Nicolas tracks every iteration with metrics, diffs, and decisions. Distill the results to see what worked, what didn't, and why.

4. 🔗 Connect the dots — Link papers to experiments. When a run implements a technique from a paper, credit it with inspired_by. Use /transmute to turn paper insights into experiment ideas. What you read informs what you try next.

Every experiment lives in a git repo. Every paper lives in your Zotero library. Notes are plain markdown. There's no lock-in — Distillate enhances your existing tools.

Configuration

All settings live in ~/.config/distillate/.env. See .env.example for the full list.

The setup wizard (distillate --init) walks you through connecting Zotero, choosing a reading surface, and configuring optional features.

For advanced configuration, engagement scores, scheduling, and GitHub Actions automation — see the Power users guide.

Development

git clone https://github.com/rlacombe/distillate.git
cd distillate
uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e .
pytest tests/

License

MIT