Getting Started

What's VOLT?

VOLT is a web-based platform offering a comprehensive suite of tools for researchers’ daily workflows:

• LaTeX document creation for writing scientific publications.
• Figure generation for your publications.
• LAMMPS trajectory visualization directly in the browser, supporting 100M+ atoms.
• Trajectory analysis with a modular algorithm system—edit existing modules or integrate new ones.
• Instant messaging to communicate with your team within the platform.
• Unlimited team creation and members-invitations.
• Easy sharing of trajectories or results (e.g., DXA) via a single link.
• Unlimited Docker containers for isolated Linux environments where team members can run LAMMPS simulations.
• LLM integration—connect your AI provider API keys to use artificial intelligence across all platform modules.
• Unlimited Jupyter environments for Python-based custom code and plotting, with voltsdk for programmatic API access and secret key management.

VOLT is built for real-time collaborative work: write publications, analyze trajectories, and share results together with your team seamlessly.

As a web platform, you can access VOLT from any device with a browser. Heavy computation—trajectory analysis, virtualized containers, and storage of results like LAMMPS dumps—is handled by what we call a Cluster, and each team connects at least one cluster.

This design makes VOLT extremely scalable. If you run out of compute resources for your team’s workload, just connect another cluster—your own computer, an old machine, or a server.

Think of VOLT as a “Microsoft Office for materials science”—a set of integrated sub-applications that keep your research inside a single ecosystem.

Our mission is to create a modular platform that centralizes materials research teams and offers a robust plugin marketplace for one-click LAMMPS simulation analysis. Everything in VOLT is open-source and free, because science progresses by building on the work of others—and now you can be part of it. 😉

Creating your VoltID

Go to app.voltcloud.dev/auth/sign-in to get started. You can sign in using your Google, GitHub, or Microsoft account. If you prefer not to use any of those options, you can enter your email address and continue. If an account already exists with that email, you'll be asked for your password — otherwise, you'll be prompted to fill in your details to create a new account.

Onboarding

Team Creation

After creating your account, the first step is to create a team. This is required because each team has its own:

• Uploaded simulations.
• Clusters to store simulations and run analyses.
• And more...

In other words, you can think of a team as a workspace.

You can rename your team later, and you can create additional teams at any time.

Connecting a Cluster

A cluster can be your personal computer, a spare machine, or a dedicated server. Each team must have at least one cluster. Clusters are used to store data and run analyses — all of your team's information will live there. You can also share the same cluster across multiple teams.

After selecting your cluster type, assign it a name:

Finally, you'll need to run the provided command in your terminal. If you selected server, run the command via SSH on your server. If you're using your personal computer, simply open a terminal and run it there.

Once the command finishes, you're all set to start using VOLT! 🚀

Optional: Downloading VOLT

You can use VOLT directly from your preferred web browser. However, you can also download it and use it as a desktop application. There is no difference in functionality or performance — some people simply find it more comfortable to work from a dedicated app rather than the browser.

To download the latest version of VOLT:

What's Next?