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May 4, 2026
Full optimization experiment editor, Arbin reader, Maccor coverage, UCP input schema

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Full editor for optimization experiments

Optimization experiments now use the same protocol editor as the rest of the app. The bare text field has been replaced with a rich editor featuring YAML syntax highlighting, dark-mode support, frontend pre-validation, and the full protocol-builder dialog for picking templates and tuning steps. New protocols pre-load a “Constant Current Charge” template so users have a working starting point.

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Iterative metrics for design optimization

Design optimization now supports CyclewiseMetric and StepwiseMetric wrappers end-to-end. The optimization form lets you target a metric on a specific cycle or step with bounded input fields driven by the parsed experiment, mix pipeline variables alongside PyBaMM variables, and round-trips wrapped metrics through save/load. A long-standing bug where repeated protocol blocks were flat-expanded has also been fixed, which broke solution.cycles indexing for cycle-wise metrics. Two new templates ship: a simplified Charge optimization and composite system models.

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Arbin cycler support

ionworksdata now reads native Arbin exports — CSV, XLSX, and the binary .res format. The .res reader extracts data directly from Arbin’s export format (no separate Access database tool required), sorts rows chronologically to handle interleaved multi-session recordings, and reads the absolute start time from the file’s session metadata. Auto-detection picks the right reader from file headers, and arbin res is also exposed as an explicit reader name.

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Maccor protocol coverage

The Maccor parser and simulator now handle several real-world protocol features that previously failed at parse time or during simulation, including per-limit safety gotos, Chg/Dis Func CCCV step types, and robust variable setvar handling. The Maccor ionworksdata reader also gained support for the compact short-form column header set used by some firmware versions, which previously crashed and silently dropped capacity/energy columns.

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Machine-checkable UCP input schema

The discovery endpoint /discovery/schemas/protocol now exposes a JSON Schema matching the actual YAML authoring format (single-key dicts like {Charge: {...}}) rather than the internal parsed shape. Parity tests round-trip good and bad fixtures through both the schema and the parser so they cannot drift. Submitting the legacy kind: shape to POST /protocols/validate now returns a helpful error pointing at the canonical YAML examples, and the discover-api and run-simulations skills show local pre-validation via jsonschema.validate(...).
Improvements
  • The Ionworks Agent tab has been replaced with a static instructions page pointing to the Ionworks Agentic Toolkit; the in-app chat agent has been removed in favour of the SKILL.md-based workflow.
  • New cell specifications no longer pre-fill a default capacity, so users enter the actual cell capacity from the start.
Fixes
  • Storage permissions are now enforced at the organization level so members of the same org can read each other’s measurement files as expected.
  • created_by_email is now consistently populated on cell-spec, cell-instance, and cell-measurement responses across both get and list endpoints.
  • Simulation usage is aggregated at the organization level (matching the org-level usage limit that the backend already enforces) and is fetched from a dedicated GET /organizations/current/usage endpoint.
Fixes
  • Half-cell ECM now exposes anode and cathode potential variables (Anode potential [V], Cathode potential [V]) for plotting and metrics.
  • get_cycle_metrics keeps the Cycle count column name on output instead of renaming it to Cycle number, matching the input convention used throughout the data pipeline.
Improvements
  • validate_measurement_data, CellMeasurement.create, and CellMeasurement.create_or_get accept a skip_checks parameter so callers can relax a single strict validator (e.g. time_gaps) instead of disabling strict mode wholesale. Unknown check names raise ValueError, and the canonical set is exposed as ionworks.validators.STRICT_CHECK_NAMES. validate_strict=True is now the recommended default.
Improvements
  • New Arbin reader covering CSV, XLSX, and native .res exports (see the highlight above).
  • Maccor reader now accepts the compact short-form column header set used by some cycler firmware versions.
Improvements
  • New electrolyte parameterization page with a worked Landesfeind fit example.
  • Optimization experiment editor, iterative metrics, simplified Charge template, and composite system models are documented.
  • Custom variables reference now documents anode/cathode potential exposure on the half-cell ECM (English and Japanese).
  • Maccor native CCCV step type is documented (English and Japanese).
  • Arbin is listed in the supported cyclers table.
  • SEO metadata (keywords, OG tags, tightened descriptions) added across the docs site, including expanded data-fitting guide descriptions.
Improvements
  • Each mirrored package (ionworksdata, ionworks-schema, ionworks-api, iwutil, ionworkspipeline, skills) now ships a per-package CHANGELOG.md in Keep-a-Changelog format, written and validated as part of the release workflows.
  • discover-api and run-simulations skills updated to reference the new UCP input JSON Schema and demonstrate local pre-validation.
  • upload-data skill updated to recommend validate_strict=True and document the new skip_checks parameter.