FAIRy

About

FAIRy is designed around how data actually moves inside labs, cores, and collections.

What is Datadabra / FAIRy?

FAIRy is a local-first dataset validator and submission readiness tool. It helps researchers and institutions check their data before it's handed off — to a repository, a core facility, a collections manager, whoever's on the receiving end.

FAIRy runs entirely on your computer. Nothing is uploaded. It looks at your files and metadata, checks them against a defined set of rules, and tells you exactly what needs to be fixed before someone rejects the dataset.

Datadabra is the company building FAIRy.

We're doing that in two layers:

FAIRy Core (open)

The core validator — the part that runs locally, flags missing/invalid fields, checks naming/ID consistency, and generates a one-page readiness report — is being built to stay available to researchers and labs. The goal is that you can run it yourself, get a clear "fix these items" list, and avoid getting bounced. This tool will be freely available to support the FAIR data sharing standards and our vision.

FAIRy for Institutions

Institutions have a different problem: they need repeatable intake. We work with data stewards, curators, and core facilities to encode "this is what we require before we accept your data" into a rulepack. FAIRy then produces two things they can actually use:

  • a Submission Readiness Report they can send back to the submitter, and
  • an Attestation file — a timestamped record of what was checked, under which rules, and on which files by hash — that can be kept internally for review, audit, or compliance.

The mission behind both is the same: make research data usable, not just technically "published," and stop wasting expert time on preventable back-and-forth.

About Jennifer Slotnick

My background crosses enterprise software and bioinformatics. I've worked on data-heavy systems in industry, and I've also spent time inside research settings where sequencing data, specimen records, and metadata all have to move from "local folder" to "institutional record."

The same pattern shows up in both worlds: talented people lose hours to avoidable cleanup — missing required fields, inconsistent IDs, filenames that don't match policy — instead of doing the work they're actually trained to do.

FAIRy exists because that bottleneck is fixable. The tool runs locally, applies the rules an institution already cares about, and produces two things that save time on both sides: a clear "here's what to fix" sheet for the submitter, and an auditable record of what was checked for the curator or data manager.

The goal is simple: scientists and data stewards should spend less time untangling formatting and more time on actual research and curation.

How we work with institutions

We support institutions in two ways:

FAIRy Core (no-cost tooling for researchers and labs)

FAIRy Core is the local validator that runs on your own machine. It checks required metadata fields, filename rules, and ID consistency, and produces a Submission Readiness Report (what to fix) — without uploading data anywhere.

The goal is to let researchers catch problems themselves before handoff.

Institutional pilots (scoped engagement)

For data stewards, collections, and core facilities, we run a short pilot where we:

  • capture your intake requirements (the "must not be blank / must match / must follow this pattern" rules),
  • encode them into a rulepack,
  • generate a readiness report in language you can forward internally, and
  • produce an attestation file that documents what was checked, when, and under which rules.

You keep that rulepack. You can continue running FAIRy internally with it, and you can add or refine rules over time as your policies change.

Some groups are comfortable maintaining their own rulepack after the pilot. Others ask us to maintain and update it for them and keep generating reports. Both paths are supported.

Pilots are structured, budgetable work.

If you manage or review incoming datasets and want to scope a pilot, you can request one here:

Get in touch with FAIRy

Get in touch about pilots, collaboration, or questions.