Crate scientific_workflow 

Rust primitives for reproducible scientific workflows.

scientific-workflow provides the data and execution foundations needed to describe scientific systems, record their evolution, and organize scoped computational work. The crate is intentionally divided by responsibility: state representation, in-memory state time series, storage, dispatch, and language bridges remain separate modules rather than accumulating behind one monolithic interface.

Current modules

configuration provides the standard config/{fixed,sweep,paths}.json project layout, deterministic Cartesian or explicit-case task expansion, immutable dict-like resolved parameters, named path resolution, and byte-exact source export.

system_state provides:

• JSON-defined, immutable field layouts;
• optional natural-language field descriptions without persisted Rust types;
• heterogeneous concrete Rust payloads behind a typed API;
• clone-free payload insertion, mutation, and extraction;
• explicit per-payload cloning of complete states;
• mutable, checked time-point progression.

Type erasure and boxing remain internal to that module. Downstream crates work with their original concrete payload types.

time_series provides the in-memory analysis collection for complete, ordered states. It enforces shared-layout identity and increasing simulation indices, offers a lightweight borrowed view, and permits field-level mutation without exposing mutable state time. It deliberately performs no serialization, chunking, or filesystem IO.

storage provides named partial-state streams with writer-owned sampling sampling intervals, borrowed JSON encoding only when due, bounded asynchronous persistence through one worker per recording, byte-targeted chunking, atomic recording metadata, per-key payload decoders, and verified analysis reconstruction. Import prelude when an application wants the complete supported API in scope without listing each module separately.

Basic use

use scientific_workflow::prelude::*;

let spec = SystemStateSchema::load_json_template("state.json")?;
let mut state = spec.create_empty_state(SimulationTime::from_iteration(0));

assert!(
    state
        .insert_payload("population", vec![10_u64, 20, 30])?
        .is_none()
);
state
    .payload_mut::<Vec<u64>>("population")?
    .push(40);
let time = state.advance_simulation_time(None)?;
assert_eq!(time.iteration(), 1);
let population = state.take_payload::<Vec<u64>>("population")?;

assert_eq!(population, vec![10, 20, 30, 40]);

Future dispatcher functionality will organize scoped workflow execution without changing the public state-value ownership or storage contracts.

Modules

configuration

Standard JSON configuration for scientific projects and parameter sweeps.

prelude

Convenient import of the complete supported end-user API.

storage

Recording persistence and reconstruction for scientific state samples.

system_state

Template-defined, heterogeneous scientific system states.

time_series

In-memory collections of ordered scientific system states.