species (spectral characterization and inference for exoplanet science) provides a coherent framework for spectral and photometric analysis of directly imaged exoplanets and brown dwarfs which builds on publicly-available data and models from various resources. species contains tools for grid and free retrievals using Bayesian inference, synthetic photometry, interpolating a variety atmospheric and evolutionary model grids (including the possibility to add a custom grid), color-magnitude and color-color diagrams, empirical spectral analysis, spectral and photometric calibration, and analysis of emission lines.