Paper in, product out A typical chemist running a known reaction will start by finding the method described in a published paper. Mehr et al. report a software platform that uses natural language processing to translate the organic chemistry literature directly into editable code, which in turn can be compiled to drive automated synthesis of the compound in the laboratory. The synthesis procedure is intended to be universally applicable to robotic systems operating in a batch reaction architecture. The full process is demonstrated for synthesis of an analgesic as well as common oxidizing and fluorinating agents. Science , this issue p. 101