methods and status

Every method, with the label the manual gives it.

vibe-qc implements each electronic-structure method itself; established codes serve only as out-of-process references. Not every route is at the same stage, so each family below carries one of four labels. The manual is the source of truth: the feature matrix has the full option tables and the roadmap lists the experimental lines.

how to read the labels

Four labels, one rule: the output tells you which one applies.

An experimental route emits an ExperimentalWarning every time it runs and records method_status = "experimental" in the run manifest, so a research result never slips into a script unnoticed. A gated route refuses with a scientific message rather than returning a number it cannot stand behind.

production 39 families
Validated within its documented scope and covered by the release gate.
preview 8 families
Reachable and maintained, with a narrower validation envelope. The output names the caveat.
experimental 12 families
Emits an ExperimentalWarning at runtime. Research output, not validated for published numbers, and not release-gated.
gated 2 families
Fails closed with a scientific error message until the missing terms are implemented and validated.

Molecular mean field

Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham DFT on Gaussian basis sets, validated against PySCF to machine precision for HF and to grid accuracy for DFT.

  • production

    Analytic nuclear gradients, analytic and finite-difference Hessians, direct and in-core Fock builds.

  • production

    Over 500 libxc functionals: LDA, GGA, meta-GGA, global and range-separated hybrids, VV10 and double hybrids. Range-separated and VV10 gradients fall back to finite differences and say so in the output.

  • experimental

    External PyTorch provider behind the [skala] extra. Energies only, at a fixed geometry.

  • production

    Native D3(BJ). D4 runs through the dftd4 package; the native D4 backend is parity-validated for H, He and B to Ne only and refuses other elements.

  • production

    Tuned basis plus dispersion, geometric counterpoise and short-range corrections in one keyword. Calibrated on molecules; the periodic flavours need recalibration.

  • experimental

    An opt-in second integral engine for molecules and crystals: exact, RI, multipole (BUPO) or RI-BUPO Coulomb and exact or RI exchange, with an explicit resource budget and the executed provider recorded. The exact build matches libint to 1e-10 Ha; libint stays the default.

  • production

    RIJCOSX energies within 0.3 mHa of ORCA on glycine/def2-TZVP. The RIJCOSX gradient carries the documented grid-response residual.

  • production

    libecpint with the Stuttgart-Koeln MDF and LANL2DZ libraries plus per-basis sidecars. ECP-aware analytic gradients on all four molecular drivers.

  • production

    Conductor-like screening with analytic gradients for HF and DFT. COSMO-RS thermodynamics on the same surface is experimental; solvent with correlated methods is gated.

  • production

    255 bundled Gaussian sets including the solid-state pob family, on-demand Basis Set Exchange rendering, and the vibe-basis exponent optimiser.

Correlated wavefunction methods

Post-Hartree-Fock and multireference methods on the molecular reference, from MP2 to full CI.

Semiempirical methods and machine-learned potentials

Fast energy surfaces for screening and preoptimisation. Only MSINDO is validated as production within its scope; the status page for each family says what it has been checked against.

  • production

    Independent implementation for H to Xe with COSMO, NEB, molecular dynamics, metadynamics and conical-intersection optimisation. Production within the documented scope.

  • preview

    Screening and preoptimisation with in-house parameters. No DFTB+ parity; absolute energies are not claimable while the repulsive is a placeholder.

  • experimental

    Molecular Hamiltonian, analytic gradients and Gamma-periodic derivatives are implemented; external xtb parity and periodic AES electrostatics remain production gates.

  • experimental

    Molecular development route. MOPAC heat-of-formation parity is open; periodic PM6 is experimental.

  • experimental

    Retirement target: still executable as molecular prescreening, no periodic target, scheduled for removal from the public portfolio.

  • gated

    Recognised spelling that fails closed. The feathered electrostatics are not implemented and PM7 has never been executable in any release.

  • experimental

    MSINDO, DFTB, GFN2-xTB and PM6 on a finite cyclic cluster in one, two and three dimensions, with opt-in Madelung embedding.

  • production

    An external pre-trained model behind the optional [mace] extra, attributed as such. vibe-qc drives its forward pass for energies, forces, optimisation and NEB; it is not a vibe-qc electronic-structure method.

Periodic systems

Crystalline-orbital HF and KS-DFT for wires, slabs and crystals with Monkhorst-Pack sampling. Three Coulomb routes are production; the cyclic cluster lines are research.

Workflows, properties and interchange

What you do with an energy surface once you have one, and how results leave the program.