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Introduction

Megane is a high-performance molecular viewer that works wherever you do — as a Jupyter widget, a standalone web app, an embeddable React component, and a VS Code extension.

What can Megane do?​

  • Render 1M+ atoms at 60 fps in the browser using billboard impostor rendering
  • Load 28 file formats — structures (PDB, GRO, XYZ, MOL/SDF, MOL2, CIF, mmCIF, LAMMPS data, VASP, Molden, XCrySDen, CML and more), trajectories (XTC, DCD, ASE .traj, LAMMPS dump, AMBER NetCDF), volumetric grids (Gaussian CUBE, OpenDX) and spectra (JCAMP-DX)
  • Scrub large trajectories — the standalone web app, JupyterLab, and VS Code parse in a Web Worker and decode XTC / LAMMPS dump trajectories and multi-frame XYZ / PDB files of 8 MB or more on demand, so you can scrub multi-GB files without loading every frame into memory (DCD and AMBER NetCDF are decoded in full), and the Jupyter widget sends frames from the kernel one at a time. The megane serve backend also exposes a binary WebSocket protocol for the Streaming pipeline node
  • Build visual pipelines with a drag-and-drop node editor, describe them in natural language to the AI pipeline generator (docked in the pipeline editor, under the graph), or write them as Python/TypeScript code
  • Edit structures in Megane Builder — add, delete, move and re-element atoms, draw bonds, build bulk crystals, supercells and slabs, and save as XYZ / PDB / MOL — or, for anything with a unit cell, CIF / VASP POSCAR. It runs at /builder.html in the standalone web app, from the Megane view in VS Code's activity bar and the Megane panel in JupyterLab's left sidebar, and as megane.Builder() in notebooks
  • Integrate with Plotly, MDX/Next.js, ipywidgets, and any framework via the framework-agnostic renderer
  • Light, dark, and auto themes — cycle through Light / Dark / Auto via the Theme button on the Pipeline panel's left rail; persisted across sessions. Auto follows the VS Code or JupyterLab theme when Megane runs inside one, and the OS preference elsewhere

Choose your distribution​

Megane ships in six distributions, grouped by what you want to do — view your data interactively, embed the viewer in your own app, or parse files programmatically.

CategoryDistributionInstallStart here
ViewStandalone web apppip install megane, then megane serveStandalone web app
ViewJupyter widgetpip install meganeJupyter widget
ViewJupyterLab extensionpip install meganeJupyterLab extension
ViewVS Code extensionInstall the Megane extensionVS Code extension
EmbedReact componentnpm install megane-viewerReact component
ParsePython packagepip install meganePython Pipeline API

For a side-by-side comparison of which formats and UI features each distribution supports — including known gaps — see Platform Support.

Supported file formats​

Structures​

FormatExtension
Protein Data Bank.pdb
GROMACS structure.gro
XYZ (single- or multi-frame, incl. extended Lattice=).xyz, .jxyz, .extxyz
MDL Molfile (V2000 and V3000).mol
MDL SDfile (parsed via the Molfile reader).sdf
Tripos MOL2.mol2
Crystallographic Information File.cif
Macromolecular CIF (mmCIF/PDBx).mmcif
LAMMPS data.data, .lammps
AMBER topology.prmtop
ASE trajectory.traj
LAMMPS dump (opens standalone as a multi-frame structure).lammpstrj, .dump, .trj
VASP (matched by filename as well as extension; XDATCAR is multi-frame)POSCAR, CONTCAR, XDATCAR, .vasp
Molden ([Atoms] geometry and [GEOMETRIES] XYZ frames).molden
XCrySDen (.axsf is a multi-frame animation).xsf, .axsf
Chemical Markup Language.cml
Chem3D XML.c3xml
Wavefunction Odyssey (XML and Spartan-style text layouts).xodydata, .odydata
CASTEP NMR magres.magres
GAMESS output (each coordinate block becomes a frame).gamess
CASTEP phonon (structure half).phonon

Trajectories​

FormatExtension
GROMACS trajectory.xtc
CHARMM/NAMD DCD trajectory.dcd
AMBER NetCDF trajectory.nc
LAMMPS dump (also loadable standalone, above).lammpstrj, .dump, .trj

Volumetric grids and spectra​

FormatExtension
Gaussian CUBE.cube, .cub
OpenDX scalar field.dx
JCAMP-DX spectra (AFFN plus the SQZ/DIF/DUP compressed forms).jdx, .jcamp, .dx

A grid is rendered as an isosurface over a separately-loaded structure; a spectrum is a 2D trace drawn by the terminal SpectrumPlot node. .dx is claimed by both OpenDX and JCAMP-DX, so the loader sniffs the file head and tells you if it is really the other one.

Bonds and topology​

FormatExtension
GROMACS topology.top
CHARMM/NAMD PSF.psf

Per-host coverage (which formats each platform's UI can open vs. parser-only access) is enumerated in Platform Support.

Architecture at a glance​

Megane is a Rust core compiled to both WebAssembly (browser) and a Python extension (PyO3), with a TypeScript/React frontend built on Three.js.

┌────────────┐     ┌────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│  Rust core │────▶│  WASM (browser)    │────▶│  React / Three.js│
│ megane-core│     └────────────────────┘     └──────────────────┘
│            │     ┌────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│            │────▶│  PyO3 (Python)     │────▶│  Jupyter widget  │
└────────────┘     └────────────────────┘     └──────────────────┘

All environments share the same parser and pipeline execution engine — a pipeline defined in Python produces identical output to the same pipeline in the browser.

Next steps​