Researchers and developers working in molecular modeling often face a common challenge: how to integrate their own simulation methods, tools, or workflows into their modeling platform. Whether it’s a newly developed algorithm, a custom-built force field, or a connector to an external service, integrating that work into daily modeling tasks can be time-consuming and messy.
The good news is that SAMSON offers a way to incorporate your own functionality directly into the platform through what it calls SAMSON Extensions. With the SAMSON SDK, you can develop and deploy your own modules—apps, editors, interaction models, visual models, and more—all integrated into the SAMSON user interface and workflow. Whether you’re a researcher with a custom simulation method or a developer building tools for scientific modeling, this capability can help you streamline and scale your work.
Why Extend SAMSON?
Let’s say you’ve written a Monte Carlo simulation method. Running it in a standalone environment and exporting/importing data into your main modeling tool might work for small projects but becomes inefficient as your work or collaboration scales. With SAMSON Extensions, you can:
- Turn your algorithm into a native SAMSON app or simulation tool.
- Make it accessible directly from SAMSON’s interface (e.g., via the Home > Apps menu).
- Leverage SAMSON for visualization, structure handling, and user interaction.
- Distribute the extension to colleagues or the wider community—free or paid—through SAMSON Connect – Marketplace.
What You Can Develop
Using the SAMSON SDK, you can create a variety of modules depending on your needs:
- Apps—functional tools that may wrap external programs or offer entirely new capabilities.
- Editors—interactive tools for modifying molecular structures, ideal for custom structure generation or deformation.
- Interaction models—compute energies and forces, great for physically based tools, force field testing, or exploratory models.
- State updaters—control simulation dynamics, useful for implementing your own minimization or dynamics algorithm.
- Visual models—provide new ways of visualizing molecules or properties in SAMSON’s viewport.
Getting Started
To develop a SAMSON Extension, begin by downloading the SAMSON SDK from the Download page once signed in to SAMSON Connect. The SDK includes tools, templates, and documentation to help you quickly write and integrate new modules with high performance.
The SDK is cross-platform and designed with ease of distribution in mind. Once your extension is ready, you can distribute it via SAMSON Connect. If you work with a team, use cases can be shared reproducibly across environments. If your extension is more widely useful, you can even offer it as part of a subscription model, with SAMSON handling payment via Stripe.
A Sustainable Workflow
One of the most powerful aspects of developing SAMSON Extensions is that it helps you create a sustainable and shareable workflow. Instead of patchwork tools, you embed your solutions where they’re most needed—right inside the modeling environment. This reduces context-switching, improves reproducibility, and makes collaboration easier.
Learn more about how to develop and distribute SAMSON Extensions in the official documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.