The system
Autonomous R&D is an error correction problem.
A loop left running for months meets its own errors at every turn. Wrong hypotheses, buggy scripts, regressions nobody catches. It survives on one condition: it must catch and correct more error than it introduces. A quantum computer lives by the same condition against noise.
Amico is the system built to meet it: it assembles, tests, and improves well-designed software, turn after turn. That is how we built the stack for quantum computers. The open source lives in Amicode.
The loop
Every turn runs the scientific method: hypothesize, experiment, measure, decide. Subagents carry the turns. Careful context management keeps them on task.
The research loop drawn as a circle with its stages labelled: hypothesize, experiment, measure, decide, and the human prompt as the one station a person holds. The circle lifts into a long helix as the view rotates, showing the third dimension the loop advances along, with Amico as the axis it winds around. The same four stages repeat on every turn, and the far end of the coil thins into a dotted trail rather than ending. A helix seen straight down its own axis is indistinguishable from the loop it started as.
Error correction at every turn
Lessons land as testable software where they can. Prose decays. A test doesn’t.
Critic agents
The plan is challenged before compute.
Analysis agents
An independent pass reads the raw result, not the write-up.
Integrated CI
Every change runs the tests.
Testable skills
Procedures ship as software, versioned and tested.
The researcher stays at the center. Results and insights arrive in human-readable form, LaTeX if wanted. There is room to question, add, and improve hypotheses. From idea to publication, faster.
The first domain · Quantum control
Autonomous Research Starting with Quantum
Autonomous research needs problems that span every discipline, results only real hardware can settle, and experiments fast enough to turn the loop thousands of times a day. Quantum is all three. This is where we start.
The disciplines
One machine, every discipline at once.
Algorithms, error-correcting codes, compilers, pulse optimization, pulse calibration, FPGA engineering, decoders, AI models, reinforcement learning, waveform generation, cryogenic fridges, vacuum chambers, superconductivity, atoms, lasers. A quantum computer is all of it at once. So is the loop that builds one.
The score
The hardware keeps the score.
Every claim ends in a number the device produced: gate fidelity from randomized benchmarking, logical error rate from syndrome data. Simulation guides the search. The hardware settles it.
The cadence
The loop turns in microseconds.
A robot rollout takes minutes. A training run takes weeks. A quantum control experiment takes microseconds. Thousands of loops close in an afternoon.
A loop that closes on quantum hardware has already met the hard part of every other physical science. That is the system we are building, and this is where we start.
Every layer between an application and a quantum processor is a separate tool today. Assembled, they collapse into one.
Industry standard
Harmoniqs
Toolkit
The Research Tools
A researcher needs the right tools for experimentation on device, autonomous or not. We start with the quantum toolkit, built from first principles, used to realize a self-running quantum computer.
This is the stack we had already built. It makes Amicode powerful in our hands, and it is the model for every field with real-world, verifiable objectives: robotics, AI, finance, chip design, grid optimization. Outside quantum, Amicode starts from the software a field already uses, and improves toward objectives it can verify.
Trajectory optimization
DirectTrajOpt
Direct collocation with no quantum in it. Piccolo is built on this. It is the same method that plans motion for robots and spacecraft.
Trajectory data
NamedTrajectories
Trajectories with user-defined named components. The structure the tools hand back and forth, whatever the system.
Robotics control
Aerospace trajectories
Compile · Pulse compilation
Legato
Interface to other circuit software packages, curated library of pulses, algorithm development, and QEC code design.
Premium
Legatissimo
Algorithms, circuits, syndrome extractions and stabilizers, all compiled into pulses, with a growing library of hardware-validated multi-qubit pulses.
Optimize · Pulse optimization
Piccolo
Locally runnable pulse optimization and simulation, with a growing community.
Premium
Piccolissimo
Piccolo tooling over Altissimo, our in-house solver that runs on CPU and GPU and scales to systems previously out of reach. The research loop keeps improving it and building the pulse library.
Calibrate · Pulse calibration
Intonato
Closed-loop pulse tuning on real hardware. Measure the device, update the model, re-solve the pulse, repeat.
Premium
Intonatissimo
Hardware calibration is the hardest problem. Our proprietary calibration algorithms are hardware-validated and continuously refined.