The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Jaxonomy — hybrid dynamical systems on JAX listing page.
Differentiable simulation of hybrid dynamical systems — powered by JAX.
Block diagrams meet automatic differentiation. Model physical systems, close the loop with LQR/MPC/Kalman, and differentiate through everything.
Why JAX? · Install · Quick Start · Gallery · Examples · Docs
Every panel above is produced by jaxonomy.simulate on a model built from the library.
Jaxonomy is a Python framework for modeling, simulating, and optimizing hybrid dynamical systems — systems that combine continuous physics, discrete control laws, and event-driven logic in a single model. Every simulation runs on JAX, so it is JIT-compilable, batchable with vmap, and fully differentiable from end to end.
Choosing JAX as the compute backbone unlocks capabilities that are impractical with NumPy-based simulators:
| Feature | SciPy / NumPy | Julia / DiffEq | Modelica | MathWorks¹ | Jaxonomy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Python-native | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| JIT / code generation | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ (C++) | ✓ (C/C++) | ✓ |
| Full autodiff through ODE | ✗ | Partial | ✗ | Partial² | ✓ |
| Hybrid events & zero-crossing | Partial | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Acausal / equation-based | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ (Simscape) | ✓ |
| Block-diagram composition | ✗ | Partial | Partial | ✓ (Simulink) | ✓ |
| State-machine modeling | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (Stateflow) | ✓ |
| LQR / MPC / Kalman built-in | ✗ | Partial | Via libs | ✓ (Toolboxes) | ✓ |
| Neural ODE / SINDy | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Reduced-order modeling (balred / POD-DEIM / DMD / Koopman) | ✗ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ (Toolboxes) | ✓ |
| Batch / ensemble (vmap) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open-source (MIT) | ✓ | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ |
¹ Simulink + Simscape + Stateflow + Control System Toolbox · ² Via Simulink Design Optimization, no end-to-end AD
| Capability | What it enables |
|---|---|
| ⚡ JAX-native engine | JIT-compile simulations, run ensembles with vmap, differentiate through ODE solvers including event handling |
| 🔀 Hybrid dynamics + state machines | Continuous ODEs, periodic discrete updates, zero-crossing events, and StateMachineBuilder-authored finite state machines composed in one model. jax.grad flows through event times for hybrid trajectory optimisation. |
| 🔌 Acausal modeling | Modelica-inspired multi-domain components (electrical, mechanical, thermal, fluid, battery) with Pantelides index reduction and a BDF mass-matrix DAE solver |
| 🎯 Control & estimation | LQR (continuous, discrete, finite-horizon, LQG), linear MPC (native + OSQP), nonlinear MPC (shooting / transcription / Hermite-Simpson), Kalman / EKF / UKF / RLS / Luenberger, 2-DOF PID with classical tuning helpers |
| 🧮 Unit-aware wiring | Optional BusUnit annotations on ports and signals; the diagram compiler catches dimensional mismatches at build time instead of as silent runtime bugs |
| 🧠 Data-driven modeling | Neural ODEs, Universal Differential Equations, SINDy symbolic regression, neural-network blocks (MLP / PyTorch / TensorFlow / ONNX), differentiable lookup-table fitting, and statistical surrogates (Gaussian process, polynomial chaos, RBF) |
| 📉 Reduced-order modeling | jaxonomy.library.rom: linear MOR (balanced truncation, minreal, modal / residualization), POD–Galerkin with DEIM hyper-reduction, and data-driven operator ROM (DMD / DMDc / ERA, Koopman / eDMD lifted-linear predictors). One reduce(...) front door; every reduced model is a differentiable, simulatable block |
| 🎲 Uncertainty & sensitivity | First-class jaxonomy.uq workflow: Monte Carlo with parameter distributions, Latin Hypercube + quasi-Monte Carlo sampling, Sobol sensitivity decomposition, Morris screening |
| 🤝 FMI 2.0 / 3.0 interop | Import FMI co-simulation FMUs (ModelicaFMU, mixed-type and array I/O) or model-exchange FMUs (ModelicaFMUME, integrated by Jaxonomy's own solver with FMI event indicators as zero-crossings); export a diagram as a binary .fmu via build_fmu. Verified against the Reference FMUs, OpenModelica, and the fmusim reference simulator in CI |
| 🧩 150+ library blocks | Integrators, filters, state machines, look-up tables, coordinate transforms, container blocks, bus / mux family, stochastic sources, and more |
Requires Python 3.10+.
From source:
CLI runner:
A first simulation in a few lines — a custom block, built into a diagram, integrated through its ODE:
docs/examples/Jaxonomy ships an MCP server that exposes the
engine as tools an AI agent can call directly — it can enumerate library blocks,
build and validate a model, run a simulation, fit parameters to data, and
linearize a system, then reason over the actual results. This is worth wiring up
if you drive Jaxonomy from an agent (Claude Desktop/Code, Cursor, …); if you're
writing Python by hand, the pip install above is all you need and you can skip
this.
Then register the server with your agent client. For Claude Desktop, add to
claude_desktop_config.json:
Use the interpreter where jaxonomy[mcp] is installed (or the jaxonomy-mcp
entry point). The server is listed in the
MCP Registry as
io.github.machinavitalis/jaxonomy; full tool reference, client configuration
and limitations are at py.jaxonomy.com/mcp.
If you'd rather just point an agent at the documentation, start it on
SKILL.md — when to use Jaxonomy, when to reach for something else,
the core API, and the pitfalls that most often break a first script. The docs
site also publishes llms.txt views:
py.jaxonomy.com/llms.txt for an index of
every page, and
py.jaxonomy.com/llms-full.txt for the
whole documentation set as one Markdown file.
Jaxonomy is designed for hybrid systems — models where continuous physics interacts with instantaneous discrete resets. The bouncing ball is the canonical example: free-fall ODE interrupted by a collision event that reverses velocity.
The dynamics between bounces follow:
$$ \dot{x} = v, \qquad \dot{v} = -g $$
When the ball hits the ground ($x = 0$, $v < 0$) a zero-crossing event fires and the state resets:
$$ x^+ = 0, \qquad v^+ = -e \cdot v \quad (e \in [0, 1] \text{ — coefficient of restitution}) $$
Zero-crossing events are located with 40-step bisection on the solver's dense output polynomial — giving sub-microsecond temporal accuracy without user-specified tolerances.

For a linearized pendulum with state $x = [\theta, \dot\theta]^\top$:
$$ \dot{x} = Ax + Bu, \qquad A = \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 1 \ g/L & 0 \end{bmatrix}, \quad B = \begin{bmatrix} 0 \ 1/mL^2 \end{bmatrix} $$
The Linear Quadratic Regulator minimizes infinite-horizon cost:
$$ J = \int_0^\infty \bigl( x^\top Q, x + u^\top R, u \bigr), dt $$
by solving the algebraic Riccati equation $A^\top P + PA - PBR^{-1}B^\top P + Q = 0$ for the optimal gain $K = R^{-1}B^\top P$, so $u^* = -Kx$.

Jaxonomy can differentiate through complete simulations to fit model parameters to data — no finite-difference approximations, no hand-written adjoint code. Here we recover a spring–damper's stiffness and damping by differentiating the whole rollout and descending with Optax:
jax.grad(loss) flows back through every ODE step automatically, so the same recipe scales to battery ECMs (above), powertrains, or any parametric model — and jaxonomy.optimization wraps it in a higher-level Optimizable API when you want bounds, transforms, and constraints.

Jaxonomy includes a Modelica-inspired acausal modeling layer for multi-domain physical systems. You describe component connections symbolically; the compiler automatically derives the governing DAE, reduces its index, and emits a LeafSystem ready to drop into any diagram.
RC circuit with initial conditions:
$$ C,\dot{V}C = I, \qquad V_C(0) = 0,\text{V}, \qquad V{\text{src}} = 1,\text{V} $$
The same pipeline handles multi-domain systems — an electro-mechanical actuator connecting electrical, rotational, and translational domains compiles to a single optimized system.
Available acausal domains: electrical · rotational · translational · thermal · fluid

Because jax.grad, jax.jit, and jax.vmap all compose with simulate, you get powerful workflows with minimal boilerplate:
Over 150 built-in blocks covering the full signal-processing and control toolkit. A representative slice — not exhaustive:
| Category | Blocks |
|---|---|
| Sources | Constant, Step, Ramp, Chirp, Pulse, Sawtooth, Clock, DataSource |
| Stochastic | RandomNumber, UniformRandomNumber, WhiteNoise, BandLimitedNoise, PRBS, RandomSource — all support with_key for independent noise streams under vmap |
| Arithmetic & nonlinearities | Adder, Gain, Product, Abs, Power, Trigonometric, Saturate / SoftSaturate, DeadZone, RateLimiter / SoftRateLimiter, Quantizer, Backlash |
| Continuous dynamics | Integrator, Derivative, TransferFunction, LTISystem, PID / PIDContinuous |
| Discrete dynamics | IntegratorDiscrete, UnitDelay, FilterDiscrete, LowPassDiscrete, LeadLag, Notch, PIDDiscrete, PIDController2DOF, Decimator, RateTransition |
| Routing, buses, matrix | Mux / Demux, BusCreator / BusSelector / BusUpdate (with BusUnit annotations), Slice, Stack, Switch / MultiPortSwitch, IfThenElse, MatrixMultiplication, MatrixInversion, DotProduct, CrossProduct |
| Logic & state machines | TruthTable, LogicalOperator, Comparator, Relay, EdgeDetection, StateMachine (authored via StateMachineBuilder DSL) |
| Lookup tables | LookupTable1d / LookupTable2d / LookupTableND, Prelookup / InterpolationUsingPrelookup, TableSearch — all differentiable and fittable from data via fit_lookup_table_* |
| Delays & containers | TransportDelay, VariableTransportDelay, EnabledSubsystem, TriggeredSubsystem, ForEach, Conditional |
| Control | LinearQuadraticRegulator / DiscreteTimeLinearQuadraticRegulator / FiniteHorizonLinearQuadraticRegulator / LinearQuadraticGaussian, LinearDiscreteTimeMPC (native + LinearDiscreteTimeMPC_OSQP), DirectShootingNMPC / DirectTranscriptionNMPC / HermiteSimpsonNMPC |
| Estimation | KalmanFilter, ExtendedKalmanFilter, UnscentedKalmanFilter, InfiniteHorizonKalmanFilter, RecursiveLeastSquares, AugmentedStateEKF, Luenberger |
| Physics & coordinates | CoordinateRotation, RigidBody, BatteryCell |
| ML / Data | MLP (Equinox), Sindy, PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX / ONNXJax |
| ROM & surrogates | reduce(...) → ReducedOrderModel; linear MOR (balred / minreal / modal_truncation / residualize), galerkin_reduce + deim (POD–DEIM), dmd / dmdc / era, DMDForecaster / KoopmanPredictor, and surrogate blocks GaussianProcess / PolynomialChaos / RadialBasisSurrogate |
| Interop | ModelicaFMU / ModelicaFMUME (FMI 2.0 / 3.0 co-simulation and model-exchange import) + FMU export via build_fmu; MuJoCo / MJX; Ros2Publisher / Ros2Subscriber; QuanserHAL; PyTwin |
| Custom | CustomPythonBlock, CustomJaxBlock for user-authored algorithms with persistent per-instance state |
Custom blocks are first-class beyond the wrappers above: subclass LeafSystem, declare ports and states, and your block integrates with the full framework including JIT, autodiff, and event detection.
A Jaxonomy model is a Diagram — a directed graph of interconnected blocks. Blocks (LeafSystem) declare ports, continuous/discrete states, and event guards. The simulator orchestrates ODE integration, discrete updates, and event detection automatically.
The JAX backend sits underneath every simulation, giving you a clean Python API backed by XLA compilation:
Jaxonomy is the engine at the base of a three-package stack. Each package is its own repository, MIT-licensed, and depends only on the package(s) above it:
The boundary rule: anything useful to controls engineers outside robotics (HVAC, battery, aerospace, energy) belongs in Jaxonomy; anything specific to joints, actuators, contacts, and kinematic chains belongs in Jaxterity; embedded codegen, targets, and attestation belong in Jaxility.
What Jaxonomy does not yet do (or does only partially) is tracked in
KNOWN_GAPS.md — the public inverse of the internal evidence
ledger in CLAIMS.md.
Released under the MIT License from version 2.2.0 onward.
Derived from the MIT-licensed open-source package pycollimator by Collimator, Inc.