Rowan

Rowan is a cloud-native molecular modeling and medicinal-chemistry workflow platform, installable either as a K-Dense Claude Skill (local Python) or as a standalone MCP server.


Type	Claude Skill (K-Dense) · MCP server (`k-yenko/rowan-mcp`)
Supplier	K-Dense Inc. · Rowan (community OSS wrappers)
Availability	GA — Skill is part of the actively maintained K-Dense collection; MCP published on PyPI as `rowan-mcp`
Pricing	Free / OSS wrappers; Rowan API key required (free tier at labs.rowansci.com)
Capabilities	Read/Write — submits cloud compute workflows to the Rowan platform

How to install

Also packaged in the SciAgent-Skills collection (jaechang-hits (community OSS, CC BY 4.0)): clone jaechang-hits/SciAgent-Skills and run /plugin install sciagent-skills in Claude Code (or copy skills/structural-biology-drug-discovery/rowan into ~/.claude/skills/).
Claude Code / Claude.ai — Skills CLI (recommended):
```
npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills
```
Installs the K-Dense collection; enable the rowan skill when prompted. Works across Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex via the Agent Skills spec (requires Node ≥ 18).
Claude Code / Claude Desktop — manual clone:
```
git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills
cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/rowan ~/.claude/skills/
```
Project-scoped alternative: copy into .claude/skills/ instead of ~/.claude/skills/. The skill declares its own Python dependencies in its SKILL.md; install them (the K-Dense skills generally use uv / pip) when prompted on first use.
Claude Code / Claude Desktop — MCP server (k-yenko/rowan-mcp): the server runs as a long-lived local HTTP/SSE service — keep it running in its own terminal while Claude is connected (it is not a stdio server the client launches for you). Get a free API key at labs.rowansci.com, then in one terminal:
```
export ROWAN_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"
uvx --from rowan-mcp rowan-mcp
```
This boots an SSE endpoint at http://127.0.0.1:6276/sse. Leave it running. Then register the endpoint with Claude Code:
```
claude mcp add --transport sse rowan http://127.0.0.1:6276/sse
```
For Claude Desktop (no native SSE transport), add an mcp-remote proxy entry to claude_desktop_config.json:
```
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rowan": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "http://127.0.0.1:6276/sse"]
    }
  }
}
```

What it does

Rowan is a cloud-native molecular modeling and medicinal-chemistry workflow platform with a Python API. Use for pKa and macropKa prediction, conformer and tautomer ensembles, docking and analogue docking, protein-ligand cofolding, MSA generation, molecular dynamics, permeability, descriptor workflows, and related small-molecule or protein modeling tasks. Ideal for programmatic batch screening, multi-step chemistry pipelines, and workflows that would otherwise require maintaining local HPC/GPU infrastructure.

Primary use cases: pKa and macropKa prediction, conformer and tautomer ensembles, docking and analogue docking, protein-ligand cofolding, MSA generation, molecular dynamics, permeability, descriptor workflows, and related small-molecule or protein modeling tasks.

The rowan-mcp server exposes ~45 MCP tools over the same Rowan platform — workflow submitters (e.g. submit_pka_workflow, submit_docking_workflow), molecule_lookup, workflow-management tools (retrieve_workflow), and protein-management tools — so an MCP user gets the same compute surface without writing Python.

Notes

The Skill is distributed as a SKILL.md (plus code examples) in the K-Dense collection — Claude executes it locally via Bash/Python rather than as an MCP server; the skill name to enable after install is rowan. The MCP server (k-yenko/rowan-mcp, PyPI rowan-mcp) is HTTP/SSE only, so it must stay running in a terminal for the duration of the session. Both paths require a Rowan API key (ROWAN_API_KEY; free tier at labs.rowansci.com). Unverified — the rowan-mcp repository does not publish a LICENSE file; confirm licensing before redistributing.

Sources

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