PULSES: multi-agent AI for autonomous excited-state model building and dynamics

Overview & Synopsis

Simulating molecular excited-state processes requires resolving electronic and nuclear dynamics, but the cost of direct quantum-chemical calculations limits accessible system sizes and timescales. Machine-learning models can extend these simulations, yet they often need to be tailored to specific molecular systems and scientific objectives. Building and deploying such models requires coordinated decisions across conformational sampling, quantum-chemical labelling, model training, validation and dynamics. Here we introduce Paired agents for Unified Learning and Simulation of Excited States (PULSES), a multi-agent system that automates this workflow within expert-approved boundaries. A human expert and planner define the scientific objective, methods and decision boundaries, while an orchestrator coordinates domain agents and artifact-specific scientific assurance during execution. We evaluate PULSES on 15 computational chemistry tasks and demonstrate end-to-end applications to perylene exciton Hamiltonians, solvent-dependent biphenyl relaxation, and excited-state proton transfer in 10-hydroxybenzo[h]quinoline. These results demonstrate traceable, expert-bounded construction and deployment of specialized excited-state models, while retaining scientific validation as a requirement rather than assuming that successful execution establishes correctness.