Using AI for self-describing chemical visualization

At the Open Molecular Software Foundation while working on unifying visualization tools a sidequest had me modifying rdkit 2D renderings. I needed to edit the rendering of the 2D molecules, then apply those settings to a different code package.

Using framejs I used AI to quickly create a visual editor, and had the editor export JSON that I could then simply copy into the actual package I was working on. The editor described its own configuration, the AI agent can ingest the editor and configuration, so there is no need for an external canonical complex schema to unify, the editor provides its own. There is no dependency on framejs. Framejs creates an editable websites which is exactly the same as "artifacts" that AI tools such as Claude generates for you.

This is not an argument against schemas, in fact, schemas are actually more useful with AI agents, as the surface area is easily understood by agents and schemas reduce the context between different agents. This is more like a schema-lite: a way to create consistent communication between agents, tools, and humans with visual needs, without over-designing or cumbersome separation and publishing of schemas.

For highly visual tools in molecular dynamics, quickly creating your own editor to configure visualizations that are meant to be shared across platforms, systems, and codebases is something good for us humans.

See the 2D chemical visualization settings editor, with JSON export and description here that you can take and modify yourself: