A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond…

LGPL-3.0-or-laterAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Antechamber

skills CLI
$ npx skills add jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills --skill antechamber -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills antechamber --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/molecular-dynamics/antechamber .claude/skills/antechamber && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
antechamber
GitHub stars
148
Token cost
~3.2k tokens
SKILL.md length
824 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
62
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
LGPL-3.0-or-later

At a glance

A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond…

  • You are working in AMBER
  • SKILL.md covers Quick Start, Command Line Usage, Parameter Selection Heuristics and Common Examples, plus 1 more section
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Dealing with molecules not covered by standard force fields

What it does

Antechamber is an agent skill from jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills. A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond typing, charge generation or import, and force-field–compatible input generation. USE WHEN you are working in AMBER, dealing with molecules not covered by standard force fields, and already have a structure that can be processed (e.g., pdb, mol2, ac, gout). Typical use cases include parameterizing ligands or modified…

Its SKILL.md is about 3.2k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts. Compatibility notes: Requires AmberTools installed and available in PATH

It sits in Research & Science, covering Drug discovery and cheminformatics and Physical and earth sciences. The repository describes itself as: Agent skills to run computational-chemistry tasks, used in OpenClaw. The licence is LGPL-3.0-or-later.

When your agent uses it

  • You are working in AMBER
  • Dealing with molecules not covered by standard force fields
  • Already have a structure that can be processed (e.g.
  • Standard residues

Example prompts

  • “/antechamber”

Requirements

  • Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Requires AmberTools installed and available in PATH

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 5c19e75. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are bash).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

    • ambermd.org

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

  • Compatibility

    Requires AmberTools installed and available in PATH

    From compatibility in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

Context cost

Antechamber loads about 3.2k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 220 tokens; SKILL.md has 824 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~220
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~3.2k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills at commit 5c19e75, republished under its LGPL-3.0-or-later licence (© jinzhezenggroup). 824 words, ~3,170 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/antechamber/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
antechamber
description
A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond typing, charge generation or import, and force-field–compatible input generation. USE WHEN you are working in AMBER, dealing with molecules not covered by standard force fields, and already have a structure that can be processed (e.g., pdb, mol2, ac, gout). Typical use cases include parameterizing ligands or modified residues (assigning atom/bond types, generating or reading partial charges), converting structures from upstream tools into mol2/prepi formats, and preparing topology-ready inputs for downstream tools such as LEaP. DO NOT USE for standard residues, metal complexes, inorganic systems, or when no valid molecular structure is available (e.g., only SMILES).
compatibility
Requires AmberTools installed and available in PATH
license
LGPL-3.0-or-later
metadata.author
yuxt0261-ops
metadata.version
1.0
metadata.repository
https://ambermd.org/AmberTools.php
metadata.homepage
https://ambermd.org/antechamber/ac.html

antechamber

antechamber is a command-line tool for parameterizing small organic molecules or non-standard residues for molecular mechanics simulations.

Quick Start

Run antechamber:

bash
antechamber [-i INPUT_FILE] [-fi INPUT_FORMAT] [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [-fo OUTPUT_FORMAT] [options]

Command Line Usage

text
Usage: antechamber -i     input file name
                   -fi    input file format
                   -o     output file name
                   -fo    output file format
                   -c     charge method
                   -cf    charge file name
                   -nc    net molecular charge (int)
                   -a     additional file name
                   -fa    additional file format
                   -ao    additional file operation
                          crd   : only read in coordinate
                          crg   : only read in charge
                          radius: only read in radius
                          name  : only read in atom name
                          type  : only read in atom type
                          bond  : only read in bond type 
                   -m     multiplicity (2S+1), default is 1
                   -rn    residue name, overrides input file, default is MOL
                   -rf    residue topology file name in prep input file,
                          default is molecule.res
                   -ch    check file name for gaussian, default is 'molecule'
                   -ek    mopac or sqm keyword, inside quotes; overwrites previous ones
                   -gk    gaussian job keyword, inside quotes, is ignored when both -gopt and -gsp are used
                   -gopt  gaussian job keyword for optimization, inside quotes
                   -gsp   gaussian job keyword for single point calculation, inside quotes
                   -gm    gaussian memory keyword, inside quotes, such as "%mem=1000MB"
                   -gn    gaussian number of processors keyword, inside quotes, such as "%nproc=8"
                   -gdsk  gaussian maximum disk usage keyword, inside quotes, such as "%maxdisk=50GB"
                   -gv    add keyword to generate gesp file (for Gaussian 09 only)
                          1    : yes
                          0    : no, the default
                   -ge    gaussian esp file generated by iop(6/50=1), default is g09.gesp
                   -tor   torsional angle list, inside a pair of quotes, such as "1-2-3-4:0,5-6-7-8"
                          ':1' or ':0' indicates the torsional angle is frozen or not
                   -df    am1-bcc precharge flag, 2 - use sqm(default); 0 - use mopac
                   -at    atom type
                          gaff : the default
                          gaff2: for gaff2 (beta-version)
                          amber: for PARM94/99/99SB
                          bcc  : bcc 
                          abcg2: abcg2 
                          sybyl: sybyl 
                   -du    fix duplicate atom names: yes(y)[default] or no(n)
                   -bk    component/block Id, for ccif
                   -an    adjust atom names: yes(y) or no(n)
                          the default is 'y' for 'mol2' and 'ac' and 'n' for the other formats 
                   -j     atom type and bond type prediction index, default is 4 
                          0    : no assignment
                          1    : atom type 
                          2    : full  bond types 
                          3    : part  bond types 
                          4    : atom and full bond type 
                          5    : atom and part bond type 
                   -s     status information: 0(brief), 1(default) or 2(verbose)
                   -eq    equalizing atomic charge, default is 1 for '-c resp', '-c bcc', '-c abcg2' and 0 for the other charge methods 
                          0    : no use
                          1    : by atomic paths 
                          2    : by atomic paths and structural information, i.e. E/Z configurations 
                   -pf    remove intermediate files: yes(y) or no(n)[default]
                   -pl    maximum path length to determine equivalence of atomic charges for resp, bcc and abcg2,
                          the smaller the value, the faster the algorithm, default is -1 (use full length),
                          set this parameter to 10 to 30 if your molecule is big (# atoms >= 100)
                   -seq   atomic sequence order changeable: yes(y)[default] or no(n)
                   -dr    acdoctor mode: yes(y)[default] or no(n)
File Formats
File Format TypeAbbreviationIndex
Antechamberac1
Sybyl Mol2mol22
PDBpdb3
Modified PDBmpdb4
AMBER PREP (int)prepi5
AMBER PREP (car)prepc6
Gaussian Z-Matrixgzmat7
Gaussian Cartesiangcrt8
Mopac Internalmopint9
Mopac Cartesianmopcrt10
Gaussian Outputgout11
Mopac Outputmopout12
Alchemyalc13
CSDcsd14
MDLmdl15
Hyperhin16
AMBER Restartrst17
Jaguar Cartesianjcrt18
Jaguar Z-Matrixjzmat19
Jaguar Outputjout20
Divcon Inputdivcrt21
Divcon Outputdivout22
SQM Inputsqmcrt23
SQM Outputsqmout24
Charmmcharmm25
Gaussian ESPgesp26
geostd cifccif27
GAMESS datgamess28
Orca inputorcinp29
Orca outputorcout30
pdbqtpdbqt31

NOTE: AMBER restart file can only be read in as additional file.

Charge Methods
Charge methodAbbreviationIndex
RESPresp1
AM1-BCCbcc2
CM1cm13
CM2cm24
ESP (Kollman)esp5
Mullikenmul6
Gasteigergas7
ABCG2abcg28
Read in chargerc9
Write out chargewc10
Delete Chargedc11

NOTE:

  • RESP charge method requires a Gaussian output file with ESP data (-fi gout), a Gaussian ESP file (-fi gesp) or a GAMESS dat file (-fi gamess) as input.
  • CM1 and CM2 charge methods require specific interfaces and are not recommended for general use.
  • ESP (Kollman) charge method requires a Gaussian output file with ESP data (-fi gout) as input.
  • Gasteiger charge method will ignore the net molecular charge and assign charges based on atom types and connectivity, which may not be suitable for charged molecules.
  • Read in charge method requires a charge file (-cf CHARGE_FILE) with a whitespace-separated list of floating-point charges, ordered exactly as atoms in the input structure, with no indices, labels, or extra columns.

Parameter Selection Heuristics

Unmentioned options are recommended to be left at their default values unless you have specific needs or understand the implications of changing them. The following heuristics can help guide your choices for the most commonly used options:

Basic IO
  • -i, -fi, -o, -fo must appear.
  • -a, -fa, -ao are used when you want to read in additional information from another file and overwrite specific attributes in the input file. WARNING: this can lead to mismatches if the additional file does not correspond to the input file in atom order.
  • -rn is used when you want to specify a custom residue name in order to increase readability.
Show full SKILL.md (390 more words)Show less
Charge Generation
  • -c is used when the input file does not contain usable atomic charges, including cases where (1) the input file lacks charge information, (2) the existing charges cannot be directly interpreted (e.g., they originate from upstream quantum chemistry calculations where charges are not explicitly mapped one-to-one to atoms or are stored in complex formats), or (3) new charges need to be recalculated using a chosen method.
  • Typically, -c bcc is recommended for general use. Unless higher accuracy is required or the system is sensitive to charge details, in which case -c resp with a properly prepared Gaussian output file is recommended. The other charge methods are generally not recommended for typical use cases.
  • -cf is only used when -c rc is specified, otherwise it will be ignored.
  • -nc is required when charges need to be calculated and the net molecular charge is not zero. It will be ignored if there is no charge calculation.
Calculation Control
  • -ek is not recommended for general use. If additional mopac or sqm keywords are needed, it is recommended to run mopac or sqm separately.
  • -gk, -gopt, -gsp, -gm, -gn, -gdsk, -gv, -ge should never be used. If a gaussian job is needed, use external Gaussian instead.
Atom Type Assignment
  • -at is used when the input file does not contain usable atom type information.
  • Typically, -at gaff2 is recommended for general use. Unless you are parameterizing a modified residue that must be fully consistent with the standard AMBER force fields, in which case -at amber should be used to ensure compatibility and higher accuracy. The other atom type options are generally not recommended for typical use cases.

Common Examples

Convert antechamber format to Sybyl Mol2
bash
antechamber -i input.ac -fi ac -o output.mol2 -fo mol2
Convert antechamber format to Sybyl Mol2, and use charges from additional file instead
bash
antechamber -i input.ac -fi ac -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -a additional.mol2 -fa mol2 -ao crg
Convert antechamber format to Sybyl Mol2, and use read in charges
bash
antechamber -i input.ac -fi ac -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -c rc -cf charges.txt
Convert antechamber format to Sybyl Mol2, and assign AMBER atom types
bash
antechamber -i input.ac -fi ac -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -at amber
Convert antechamber format to Sybyl Mol2, and rename residue to LIG
bash
antechamber -i input.ac -fi ac -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -rn LIG
Convert PDB to Sybyl Mol2, use AM1-BCC method to calculate charges with net molecular charge -1 and assign GAFF2 atom types
bash
antechamber -i input.pdb -fi pdb -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -c bcc -nc -1 -at gaff2
Convert Gaussian output to Sybyl Mol2, use RESP charges method and assign GAFF2 atom types
bash
antechamber -i input.gout -fi gout -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -c resp -at gaff2
Convert Gaussian output to Sybyl Mol2, but use AM1-BCC method to recalculate charges with net molecular charge -1 and assign GAFF2 atom types
bash
antechamber -i input.gout -fi gout -o output.mol2 -fo mol2 -c bcc -nc -1 -at gaff2

References

© jinzhezenggroup, LGPL-3.0-or-later. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in molecular-dynamics/antechamber of jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 5c19e75

Compare with similar skills

Antechamber next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

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Marine Carbonate ChemistryK-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills48k1 repos~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Chem Solution Mdlearningmatter-mit/AtomisticSkills176—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Chemgraphargonne-lcf/ChemGraph162—~2.7kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
AstropyzLanqing/codex-claude-academic-skills4.7k13 repos~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassBSD-3-Clause

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Questions about Antechamber

What does Antechamber do?

A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond…. Antechamber is an agent skill from jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills. A command-line tool in AmberTools for preparing small molecules or non-standard residues within GAFF/AMBER-compatible chemical space for molecular mechanics simulations, by automating atom/bond typing, charge generation or import, and force-field–compatible input generation.

When should I use Antechamber?

Antechamber fits situations like: you are working in AMBER; dealing with molecules not covered by standard force fields; already have a structure that can be processed (e.g; standard residues.

How do I install Antechamber in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills --skill antechamber -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (molecular-dynamics/antechamber in jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills) into .claude/skills/antechamber in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Antechamber in Codex?

Run `npx skills add jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills --skill antechamber -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (molecular-dynamics/antechamber in jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills) into .agents/skills/antechamber in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Antechamber in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills --skill antechamber -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/antechamber, .gemini/skills/antechamber, .github/skills/antechamber and .opencode/skills/antechamber in your project.

What does Antechamber need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Antechamber is instructions for the agent only. Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Requires AmberTools installed and available in PATH.

Does Antechamber access the network?

SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: ambermd.org. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Antechamber safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Antechamber use?

Antechamber is published under the LGPL-3.0-or-later licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Antechamber use?

About 3.2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 13k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Antechamber?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Antechamber: Rowan (K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills, 48k stars), Marine Carbonate Chemistry (K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills, 48k stars), Chem Solution Md (learningmatter-mit/AtomisticSkills, 176 stars) and Chemgraph (argonne-lcf/ChemGraph, 162 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Antechamber?

jinzhezenggroup (a GitHub organization) maintains it in jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills, which has 148 GitHub stars. The repository holds 62 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 9, 2026.

Source: jinzhezenggroup/computational-chemistry-agent-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.