About

A student-led catalog for the Cornell Tech MakerLab.

MakerLab Tools is a digital inventory and discovery system for the Cornell Tech MakerLab. It helps students browse equipment, find safety documentation, and identify which physical machines are available in the lab before they walk over.

The project began as a weekend prototype and grew into the current Notion-backed catalog. Tools, units, locations, and resources all live in Notion and feed the site through a cached read-only API layer — so staff and student volunteers can curate content without touching code.

Built by

Isaac Steinberg, Johnson Cornell Tech MBA '26. Built as a student-led project to make it easier for the MakerLab community to find and safely use the lab's equipment.

How it works

The front end is a Next.js 16 app deployed on Vercel. The Notion API serves as the source of truth for the catalog, with a per-request cache layer so the page stays fast under load. Tool images are mirrored locally so they render reliably even when upstream signed URLs expire.

If you spot a mistake or have a suggestion, talk to the MakerLab staff — flagged corrections are reviewed and updated in Notion.