Concept clusters
Every platform concept, grouped into five clusters. Each cluster answers one question about how work moves through the platform.
The platform has a handful of concepts, and they fit on one page once grouped. Each of the five clusters below answers a single question — where you work, what you run, how it executes, what you get back, and how work is organized. Read them in order the first time; after that, use this page as a map.
Names used in these docs
Ivy Biosciences is the company. .bloom* is the platform you work in — everything below lives inside it, reached through Ivy and the .bloom* studio. Ivy is the agent: it plans the run, picks and chains the tools, runs them, cites the results, and asks you when it needs a decision. The ivybloom CLI is a scriptable surface onto the same backend, and doubles as an MCP server for coding agents. pleach is the runtime underneath; its SDK narrative lives at getpleach.com. When a page says "the platform," it means .bloom*.
Surfaces — where you work
Chat is one way to start a run; curl, the CLI and an MCP client reach the same runtime. The three surfaces below share one job history for signed-in users, and they differ in how you drive them, not in what they can do. The API and MCP server are the programmatic doors to the same tools.
| Concept | What it is | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Ivy | The conversational surface. Type a natural-language goal; Ivy selects and chains tools. | Chat |
| .bloom studio* | The project-based surface. A file explorer, job dashboard, and canvas give you direct control over parameters and layout. | Studio |
| ivybloom CLI | The scriptable surface for batch processing, CI/CD, and reproducible pipelines. | CLI |
Work units — what you run
A tool is the atom. A workflow documents a multi-tool sequence you run step by step; in chat, the orchestrator reads your goal and chains the tools for you, so there is no separate pipeline to pick.
| Concept | What it is | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Tool | A single computational capability — ESMFold, DiffDock, REINVENT4. Runs as a job or an instant lookup, returns structured results, renders as a card. | Workflows |
| Workflow | A guided, documented multi-tool pipeline — prerequisites, steps, expected outputs, best practices. You run each step. | Workflows |
Above the tool sits the capability — the outcome you want. Most capabilities are served by several interchangeable tools: ESMFold, AlphaFold, and ESM3 all produce a protein structure; they differ in speed, coverage, and input, not in the goal. Think in capabilities first and let the tool follow. What you can achieve lists them and when to pick which.
Execution — how a run happens
Running a tool creates a job. Many jobs at once form a batch. A finished job emits artifacts.
| Concept | What it is | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Job | One tool invocation with inputs. Moves through queued → running → completed (or failed / cancelled). | Job lifecycle |
| Batch | Many jobs submitted together. The API and ivybloom jobs batch submit both cap a batch at 100 jobs; split a larger library across batches. | CLI batch |
| Artifact | The files a completed job produces — PDB, SDF, CSV, PNG — downloadable and exportable. | Canvas export |
Results — what you get back
A single job's result renders as a canvas card. A passport aggregates results from many tools into one profile.
| Concept | What it is | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Canvas card | The interactive result of one job. Expands through four tiers — text, preview, interactive visualization, floating window. | Canvas |
| Passport | A multi-source aggregated report. Five types — compound, target, safety, literature, therapeutic area — each pulling from several tools. | Passports |
Organization — how work is grouped
A campaign groups related chats. A session holds the state of one conversation. A checkpoint snapshots that state so you can roll back.
| Concept | What it is | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign | A project-level grouping of related chats that share an objective, with aggregated job history and canvas. | Campaigns |
| Session | The persistent container for one multi-turn conversation — messages, tool calls, pending and completed jobs. | Harness sessions |
| Checkpoint | An immutable snapshot of session state at a lifecycle event. Roll back to discard everything after it. | Checkpoints |
The scientific arc
The clusters describe the machinery. The science runs along one arc — from a disease or target down to an optimized lead. Each leg maps to a tool chain.
Disease → Target
Expression atlas → differential expression → causal genomics → druggable targets.
Target → Hit
Sequence → ESMFold → P2Rank → DiffDock → MM-GBSA → triage.
Hit → Lead
Hit → REINVENT → ADMETLab3 → AiZynthFinder → cost-aware ranking.
Choosing between close cousins
Some concepts overlap — tool vs. workflow, canvas card vs. passport, campaign vs. session. Decisions walks each pair. To match a scientific goal to a tool, see Which tool?.
Was this page helpful?
What a passport is
A passport aggregates several tools into one profile. Here is the model behind it, how it differs from running tools yourself, and when to reach for one.
Decisions
Close-cousin concepts, side by side — pick the right surface, work unit, and organizational container for the task in front of you.