dsh-kicad
DeepSeek harness plugin for AI-driven PCB design in KiCad, with agent board evals covering DRC, schematic parity, unrouted nets and fab limits.
What it does and how it connects
dsh-kicad is a native DeepSeek Harness (dsh) plugin bundle that lets the agent read, edit and check KiCad schematics, with KiCad itself deciding whether the design is correct. It is a developer preview, built and tested against dsh 0.2.1-rc.2 and KiCad 10.0.7. The kicad_* tools cover doctor, read_schematic, list_components, get_symbol_pins, list_nets, search_symbols, ERC, DRC, render, export, simulate with ngspice, sim_model, check_mcu, datasheet, check_design, simulate_firmware for ATtiny or ESP32 firmware, export_fab, fab_preset for JLCPCB and PCBWay, create_schematic, edit_schematic, read_pcb, edit_pcb, update_pcb and autoroute through Freerouting.
Design edits go through dsh approval, writes are confined to the session working directory, and after every successful edit KiCad ERC or DRC judges the result. The autorouter keeps hand-routed and existing tracks, refills copper pours, and treats KiCad DRC as the verdict. Fab export is refused until KiCad finds the board ready.
The repo also carries agent board evals in evals/, including a USB power-blocks run where the agent gave an AMS1117-3.3 a 10 uF output capacitor while its datasheet calls for 22 uF solid tantalum on the output for stability, which is the subject of an open maintainer issue asking for datasheet-backed design checks.
Alternatives
Compare side by side- kicad-mcp (blwfish)
A community MCP server letting agents drive KiCad PCB workflows such as autorouting and LCSC part lookup, rather than a DeepSeek Harness plugin bundle.
- kicad-mcp-pro
An MCP server exposing KiCad schematic, PCB, ERC/DRC, DFM, BOM and manufacturing export workflows, rather than a DeepSeek Harness plugin.
- Fenolite
Headless Python PCB automation with a browser viewer and an agent guide, rather than a DeepSeek Harness plugin that drives KiCad itself.
- spicebridge
An MCP server giving agents ngspice simulation through natural language, rather than a DeepSeek Harness plugin for full PCB design.
Recurring errors it addresses
Error Index entries this tool is built to reduce or work around.
- A KiCad MCP bridge normalizes DRC, connectivity, and geometry into its own output format, and that normalized output can silently disagree with the native KiCad engine. The maintainer had to build seeded false-PASS and false-FAIL tests because the bridge layer cannot be trusted as engineering truth on its own.Error Index
- An engineer running Claude Code against KiCad found the agent kept repeating a stale claim of 19 DRC violations that lived on in prose docs. MCP tool summaries cannot be treated as live numbers; only DRC message text and actual exports are authoritative.Error Index
- Raw LLM-driven KiCad agents cannot be trusted to generate board and schematic files directly, because the file formats contain implicit relationships the model does not understand. The safe architecture is: the model proposes intent, deterministic tools execute, and a verification engine produces evidence.Error Index
Sources
Not verified
- Pricing: none stated on the repo.
- No independent user voice found: the open issues read are maintainer-filed.
- No GitHub releases exist, so latest release fields are null.
Last verified November 6, 2026. Listings are informational. The evidence score measures public, verifiable evidence and is not an endorsement or a compatibility claim.