history

LabKit name and the first multi-domain app families

id: LK-20260530-app-family-expansion
date: 2026-05-30
sequence: 3
type: feat
compatibility: compatible
scope: historical project evolution

Context

By the end of the electrochem extraction, the repository had reusable DTA operations and several app entry points, but its naming and package layout still reflected the original Gamry workbench. It was not yet clear whether the design could serve workflows with different data, interaction, and visualization needs.

Decision and rationale

Rename the project LabKit and treat apps, rather than one scientific domain, as the main deliverables. Keep a limited set of reusable packages underneath them, then exercise that structure with image registration, region editing, curvature measurement, wearable data import, and ECG viewing.

The purpose was not to turn LabKit into one analysis program. It was to make a common MATLAB foundation useful to several independent laboratory tools without erasing the workflow decisions that made each tool understandable.

Changes

• Renamed the workbench namespace to labkit and reduced the public package surface to app-facing UI and domain operations.
• Standardized the basic workbench shell and DTA file panels across the electrochem apps.
• Added DIC preprocessing and postprocessing workflows with iterative crop, mask, registration, zoom, and preview interactions.
• Added the Curvature Measurement app and reused its anchor-curve editor across image workflows where the interaction was genuinely the same.
• Added a biosignal facade and the ECG Print app, including wearable CSV import and signal-column diagnostics.
• Added MATLAB CI and reorganized tests by source responsibility.

User and data impact

LabKit now served electrochem, image, and biosignal work from distinct app entry points. Image users gained direct manipulation of regions and anchors; biosignal users gained a viewer for imported wearable recordings. Existing DTA files remained external inputs and were not converted into a central project format.

Compatibility and migration

The namespace rename was an implementation migration for repository code. The new image and biosignal apps were additive. Scripts that referenced the former workbench namespace needed to adopt labkit or an app entry point.

Validation

Focused DIC interaction tests, biosignal import tests, layout tests, and the first MATLAB CI workflow were added during this stage. The exact historical command used for each commit was not recorded.

Evidence

• Public-surface cleanup and LabKit rename 9bd8ec8f through 179885e1.
• Unified workbench and file panels 2de7dd0f through 1be52b9d.
• DIC family aa96ae88 through fd808a56.
• Curvature Measurement 9c1f3798, 8bcde252.
• Biosignal and ECG work d7c31369 through b7cabd52.
• Initial MATLAB CI 5102640c.

Known limitations and follow-up

The new apps exposed interaction problems that ordinary callback tests did not capture well, including popout axes, anchor editing, busy-state reentry, and image zoom ownership. Those issues drove the managed interaction work that followed before v1.0.