When I first built LYFE Sciences, I really didn’t want people to have to make an account just to use it. I hate when I find a tool, want to quickly try it, and immediately get stopped by a sign-up page.
So for a long time, there were no accounts. You could paste in a variant, run an interpretation, and that was it.
What changed
The platform has grown a lot more than I expected, which has been great, but it has also created a problem.
Until now, everyone without an access code shared the same public pool of interpretations. On busy days, that pool could disappear pretty quickly, sometimes from just a few people running a large number of variants back to back. Anyone who came later in the day was basically out of luck.
At the same time, the cost of running the interpretation pipeline has continued to increase. I have been covering those costs myself, and it is getting harder to keep doing that as usage grows.
Accounts are mainly my way of making access a bit fairer while I figure out a better long-term solution.
I would still prefer not to have a login at all, but this felt like a better option than having the entire public allowance disappear early in the day.
How free interpretations work
Free interpretations are still coming from shared public capacity.
That means being signed in does not necessarily guarantee that an interpretation can run. Free runs depend on two things: whether a free worker is currently available to process the request, and whether there is still usage remaining in the shared public pool.
The account limits are there to stop a small number of users from consuming most of that pool. Each account can run up to 5 interpretations per day, with a maximum of 10 per week, as long as public capacity is still available.
So the limits are really a per-person maximum, not reserved compute. If the public pool has been used up, or the free workers are unavailable, you may need to come back later.
What about access codes?
If you already have an access code, nothing changes about how it works.
You can continue using LYFE Sciences the same way you do now, without creating an account, for as long as there is usage remaining on that code.
Once the code has been fully used, you will need to create an account if you want to continue running interpretations through the free public pool.
Why add accounts at all?
The main reason is fairness.
Instead of a few heavy sessions using most of the public capacity, accounts let me put a reasonable limit on how much any one person can use.
They also give me a way to start building features that only really make sense when queries belong to a specific user, like interpretation history, saved variants, and eventually the ability to contribute curated interpretations back into the corpus.
For now though, the main goal is simply to make access more consistent and keep the platform sustainable.
What hasn't changed
Everything already in the LYFE Sciences corpus is still completely free to read without an account, and I plan to keep it that way.
You only need an account if you want to run a new interpretation through the public system.
Thank you
LYFE Sciences started as something I built to make parts of my own work easier. I honestly did not expect this many other people to end up using it.
Seeing the platform grow has been really encouraging, and I appreciate everyone who uses it, shares feedback, reports problems, or contributes to it.
The goal is still the same: keep the useful parts open, make variant interpretation a little easier, and keep improving the platform as it grows.