SciClaw
03

Boards

A board is a visual canvas inside a project where you can bring task outputs, notes, files, and data together on a single surface — open them side by side, arrange them, and review everything in one place instead of jumping between files. The same preview engine that powers boards also drives the preview panel on the right, so anything you can open on a board you can also preview on its own.
A board with several panels open side by side (documents, a chart, and a molecule)

A board with several panels open side by side — documents, a chart, and a molecule.

1. What a Board Is

You reach boards from the board launcher in the sidebar, just below the project header. A board belongs to its project, and it opens in the preview area on the right of the workspace — the chat stays available alongside it, so you can keep working while you review.

1.1 Opening and Managing Boards

  • Open Board starts a fresh, blank board.
  • My Boards drops down the boards saved in this project. Each one is tagged me if you created it or agent if a task produced it.
  • Hover any board in the list to rename or delete it (renaming warns you if the name is already taken).

To add content, drag a file from the sidebar onto the board, or pin a task output to it. If you try to close or switch away from a board with unsaved changes, SciClaw checks with you first so nothing is lost.

Dragging a file from the sidebar onto a board to add a panel

Dragging a file from the sidebar onto a board to add a panel.

2. What You Can Preview

Whether on a board or in the preview panel on the right, SciClaw can render most of the file types you'll work with:

  • Documents — PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx / .xls / .xlsm)
  • Images — .png, .jpg, .gif, .svg, .webp, .bmp, .ico, .avif
  • Markdown & notes — .md / .mdx (notes are editable in place)
  • Data & charts — .csv tables, Mermaid diagrams (.mmd), Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb)
  • Web & code — .html, plus source and plain-text files such as .py, .js, .ts, .sh, .css, .txt, .log
  • Molecular structures — opened in the interactive 3D viewer (see below)
Document and spreadsheet previews shown on a board

Document and spreadsheet previews shown on a board.

3. Visualizing Molecule Files

Chemical and structural files open in an interactive 3D viewer. You can rotate, zoom, and pan with the mouse and reset the view at any time — on a board you can even place several structures next to each other to compare them.

3.1 Supported Formats

  • Experimental structures — .pdb, .cif / .mmcif, .mol, .mol2, .sdf, .gro, .pdbqt
  • Trajectories — .xtc, .trr, .dcd, .nc
  • Computational chemistry / periodic — .xyz, .cube, and VASP files (POSCAR / CONTCAR / CHGCAR)

3.2 Viewer Controls

A control rail along the viewer gives you:

  • Molecule list — manage the structures loaded into the scene
  • Representations — switch display styles, apply presets, and fine-tune each one; for volume / density data you can show iso-surfaces colored by value or ESP, with a draggable color-scale legend
  • Scene — background color, orientation axes, auto-rotate, and a perspective / orthographic camera
  • Cell / Crystal — unit-cell display for periodic structures
  • Trajectory — play / pause and step through frames (first / previous / next / last)
  • Vibration — animate vibrational modes
  • Screenshot — export an image of the current view

You can also select atoms to build representations around them. Experimental structures (PDB / mmCIF, opened in the Mol* viewer) additionally support interaction analysis such as protein–ligand contacts.

Molecule viewer: a 3D structure with the control rail (molecule list, representations, scene, trajectory, vibration, screenshot)

Molecule viewer: a 3D structure with the control rail — molecule list, representations, scene, trajectory, vibration, and screenshot.

Representations panel: previewing an ESP-colored iso-surface with a color-scale legend

Representations panel: previewing an ESP-colored iso-surface with a color-scale legend.

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