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Whole Tale
by Whole Tale
What Whole Tale is
Whole Tale is a free, open-source, web-based platform for creating, publishing, and running reproducible research objects called Tales. A Tale combines data references, code, a computational environment, and a research narrative with metadata. Users can create and edit Tales interactively, rerun them to reproduce results, and record workflows in isolated containers that preserve outputs and runtime information such as memory and CPU use. Interactive environments include JupyterLab, RStudio, MATLAB, and STATA, with package customization through repo2docker-compatible configuration files. Documented data providers include HTTP, DataONE, Dataverse, Globus, and DERIVA, with DERIVA still in testing or development. Whole Tale supports repository data registration, launching analysis, and publishing Tale packages to external repositories with persistent identifiers. Public Tales are browseable without signing in. Accounts can use institutional credentials, ORCID, or Google through Globus Auth. Tales can be shared with read or edit permissions. Hosted Jetstream2 use is limited to academic, fair and reasonable use.
Who it suits
Whole Tale suits researchers and teams who need reproducible, shareable computational projects. It is also suited to organizations deploying a research platform in their own environments.
What it does well
- Free and open source
- Supports JupyterLab, RStudio, MATLAB, and STATA
- Records isolated runs and runtime details
- Publishes Tales to research repositories
- Read or edit sharing permissions
What to know first
- Only two interactive environments run concurrently
- Each Tale defaults to 2 CPUs and 8GB RAM
- Hosted Jetstream2 version is for academic use
- MATLAB use is academic-only
Verdict
Whole Tale brings data, code, environments, and research narrative into reusable Tales. Its repository workflows, recorded runs, and environment choices support review and reproduction, while usage and academic licensing limits should be checked first.
Facts from Whole Tale's own pages
- Collaboration
- Users can share Tales with other Whole Tale users using read or edit permissions. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Compute limit
- The STATA tutorial states that each Tale instance is limited by default to 2 CPUs and 8GB RAM. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Data integrations
- The documentation lists Zenodo, Dataverse, Globus, DataONE, and DERIVA as supported external data sources, with DERIVA support described as being tested. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Deployment
- The project describes the platform as a building block intended to be deployable in a variety of environments. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Eligibility
- The hosted operational version on Jetstream2 is for academic use and limited to fair and reasonable use. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Environment customization
- Users can customize environments with packages using repo2docker-compatible configuration files. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Environments
- Supported interactive environments include JupyterLab, RStudio, MATLAB, and STATA. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Founded
- 2016 · wholetale.org, 19 Oct 2026
- Full-stack runtime
- No · wholetale.org, 22 Sept 2026
- Interactive environments
- Supported environments include JupyterLab, RStudio, MATLAB, and STATA. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Licensed software
- The terms say MATLAB use is academic-only, is not guaranteed in perpetuity, and does not permit proprietary, closed, or for-profit use. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Whole Tale is an open-source, web-based platform for creating, publishing, and running reproducible research objects called Tales. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
- Real-time collaboration
- No · wholetale.org, 22 Sept 2026
- Recorded runs
- Recorded runs execute a specified workflow in an isolated container and capture an immutable copy of outputs plus runtime information such as memory and CPU usage. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Repository publishing
- The platform supports publishing Tales to external research repositories and assigning persistent identifiers through the repository. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
- Repository workflows
- Whole Tale supports repository data registration, Analyze in Whole Tale launches, and publishing Tale packages to repositories. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Reproducibility
- The platform captures code, data, workflow information, and the computational environment to support review and reproduction of research results. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
- Reproduction
- Users can interactively create and edit Tales, then rerun them to reproduce and verify results. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
- Security
- The documentation says Whole Tale uses Globus Auth for authentication and access to data on users’ behalf through the Globus network. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Security and access
- The architecture documentation says identity and access management use OAuth 2.0/OpenID Connect and that the production service uses Globus Auth for federated login. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Sharing controls
- access_control · wholetale.org, 22 Sept 2026
- Sign-in
- Users can browse public Tales without signing in; account sign-in supports institutional credentials, ORCID, or Google through Globus Auth. · wholetale.readthedocs.io, 12 Oct 2026
- Support
- The project invites users to join its Slack workspace or email list to ask questions and participate in community discussion. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
- Support and community
- The project directs users to its Slack workspace and email list for questions and community discussion. · wholetale.org, 12 Oct 2026
Where Whole Tale stands on Freedom251
- Coding Playgrounds#70 of 138