Cryostats & Cool-downs

The /cryo page lets you track cryostats (dilution refrigerators) and their cool-down cycles, then assign chips to them so calibration data is automatically tagged with the cool-down it ran in.

Concepts

Concept	What it is
Cryostat	A long-lived piece of lab hardware (e.g. K-101). One row per physical fridge.
Cool-down	A single cool-down / warm-up cycle of a cryostat (e.g. 2026-001). A fridge will have many over time.
Chip	The quantum chip loaded into a cool-down. Carries a current_cooldown_id while loaded.

The relationship: Cryostat ─< Cool-down ─< Chip (many-to-one-to-many — multiple chips can live in the same cool-down).

Workflow

1. Register a cryostat

Open /cryo → New cryostat → set:

• Cryo ID (project-unique short code, e.g. K-101)
• Name (display label)
• Location

2. Open a cool-down

Inside the cryostat card → New cool-down → set just the Cooldown ID (project-unique, e.g. 2026-001).

The cool-down is created with started_at = now() and ended_at = null (active). Edit dates, description, and load chips from the detail panel.

For a past cool-down, create with the ID, then in the detail panel click edit dates to set started/ended in the past and add chips. The dashboard's cool-down filter then restricts data by the cool-down's date range — past data does not need to be re-tagged. Newly-written calibration data is automatically tagged with cooldown_id for any chip currently loaded.

3. Load chips

Inside the cool-down row → Add chip… dropdown → pick a chip.

This:

• Adds the chip to cooldown.chip_ids
• Sets the chip's current_cooldown_id to this cool-down (if active)

From this moment on, every task result, qubit history snapshot, and coupling history snapshot the workflow writes carries this cooldown_id denormalized.

4. End a cool-down (warm-up)

Click End on an active cool-down. This:

• Sets ended_at = now()
• Clears chip.current_cooldown_id for every chip that was pointing at this cool-down

Subsequent calibration writes will have an empty cooldown_id.

Wiring info

Each cool-down has a Wiring info section in its detail panel for recording how the fridge was wired up for that cycle (MUX assignments, attenuation, filters, diagrams, etc.). The editor is a Notion-style block editor that is always editable — there is no separate edit/view toggle, and changes save automatically (~1 s after you stop typing). A subtle Saving… / Saved · Xs ago indicator at the top-right of the section shows the autosave status.

• Type / to insert a block: table, image, heading, bullet / numbered / check list, toggle, quote, code, divider.
• Tables: hover a row or column edge to add or delete; drag edges to resize. Right-click a cell for the cell menu.
• Images: paste a screenshot with ⌘/Ctrl+V, drag a file in, or insert via the slash menu. Images are embedded inline as base64; max 5 MB per image to keep cool-down documents within Mongo's 16 MiB limit.
• Drag the ⠿ handle in the left margin to reorder blocks.
• Existing Markdown notes are imported automatically the first time the section is opened.
• Each save persists both the rich block representation (authoritative) and a Markdown export (for fallback rendering and search).

Wiring history (checkpoints)

Autosave keeps the current wiring up to date but does not preserve a history. When the wiring actually changes during a cool-down (e.g. a MUX line is swapped, attenuators are added), record a checkpoint:

1. Below the editor, click Save checkpoint.
2. Briefly describe what changed (required, e.g. "Swapped MUX line on Q3 readout after warm-up") and confirm.

Each checkpoint captures the actor, the comment, and a Markdown snapshot of the wiring at that moment. Checkpoints appear in the Wiring history list underneath the editor — click an entry to expand it and view the snapshot. Snapshots are append-only, so you can always trace which configuration produced which calibration data within the same cool-down.

Filtering by cool-down

The dashboard's filter bar shows a Cool-down… dropdown next to the chip selector once chips are assigned to one or more cool-downs. Picking a cool-down sets the dashboard's date range to the cool-down's started_at..ended_at (falling back to today for active cool-downs). This is a time-range filter, so historical data written before the cool-down was registered is included automatically as long as it falls inside the cool-down's date span.

Newly-written calibration data is also tagged with cooldown_id directly via the chip's current_cooldown_id, so a future indexed-filter switch can use that tag without changing past data.