MolViewStories: Interactive molecular storytelling

Effectively communicating knowledge related to molecular structures and their associated data remains a challenge, as traditional static figures limit interactivity and professional visualization tools often require substantial expertise. MolViewStories addresses these limitations by providing an open-source, web-based platform for creating and sharing interactive, narrative-driven molecular visualizations. The platform uses the MolViewSpec standard for reproducible scene specification, extended to support animations, interactive descriptions, and synchronized audio commentary. Visualization is powered by the Mol* Viewer, which leverages Web Graphics Library (WebGL) for efficient 3D rendering and WebXR for immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences. Users can construct molecular narratives through an intuitive graphical interface or a command-line workflow, enabling both exploratory and automated use. Completed stories can be shared online, exported locally, or distributed as self-contained packages that remain functional indefinitely. Each story is assigned a persistent uniform resource locator (URL) and can be modified or reused as a template, promoting collaboration and community-driven content creation. We demonstrate the capabilities of MolViewStories through a diverse set of narratives illustrating its broad applicability to research communication, education, and public outreach. Together, these examples highlight how interactive, web-based storytelling can make molecular data more accessible, reproducible, and engaging. MolViewStories is freely available at https://molstar.org/mol-view-stories with open-source code accessible at https://github.com/molstar/mol-view-stories.