> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.stoutdata.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Stout?

> Stout is the commercial control plane for Lager-powered hardware test fleets.

Stout is the commercial enterprise control plane for [Lager](https://docs.lagerdata.com), the open-source hardware test automation runtime. Lager answers the question *"how does hardware automation work?"* — how to drive a power supply, stream UART, script a test. Stout answers the question *"how do organizations operate that infrastructure at scale?"* — who can run what, on which box, when, and with what evidence.

## When you need Stout

You already have Lager running if you can `lager python test.py` against a box from your laptop. You need Stout once you have:

* **More than a handful of boxes**, distributed across benches, rooms, or sites, and no good way to see which are online.
* **Multiple teams or engineers** sharing the same hardware, where "who's using the scope right now?" is a real question.
* **Compliance requirements** that demand an audit trail of who ran what test, against which firmware, at what time.
* **CI/CD ambitions** — you want a pull request to automatically run on real hardware before it merges.
* **Customers or auditors** who want to see a dashboard of fleet health, not a Slack channel of box IPs.

## What Stout adds

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Fleet visibility" icon="server">
    Every registered Lager box reports heartbeats, capabilities, and connected devices. See your whole fleet at a glance.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Access control" icon="lock">
    Organizations, teams, three-tier roles, per-box assignments, SSO via OIDC or SAML.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Interactive & automated testing" icon="play">
    Drive a box's instruments by hand in Workbench, run structured pass/fail suites in Factory, and wire in GitHub so a pull request is checked on real hardware before it merges.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Audit and governance" icon="shield">
    Every user action is logged with actor, resource, and timestamp. Maintenance windows and resource locks prevent collisions.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## What Stout is not

Stout never forks Lager, moves core Lager capabilities behind a paywall, or ships patched Lager versions. Anything that belongs in the runtime — a new instrument driver, a new net type, a new CLI command — belongs in Lager. Stout's job is organizational, not technical.

If you want to keep using Lager on its own, you always can. Stout is an addition, not a replacement.

## Next steps

<Card title="Quickstart" href="/source/getting-started/quickstart">
  Go from an empty account to driving real hardware from your browser in about ten minutes.
</Card>