etch
Describe the board you want and it picks KiCad parts, routes it, checks it, and shows it in 3D.
What it does and how it connects
Etch is described in its README as Claude Code for circuit boards. Say the board wanted, by voice or text, and a team of agents picks real KiCad parts, places and routes the board, checks it, and hands back a board ready to send to a fab, shown in 3D. Speech-to-text runs locally. The live product runs at etch.chat.
The agent team works in turns: a picker chooses parts, values, and wiring, a part scout finds anything missing, and a lead tracks progress and decides when the work is done. The KiCad 10 engine builds the board, then the agents check their own work on every try with ERC, DRC, schematic-to-PCB parity, unconnected nets, routing, 3D models, an ngspice simulation, and benchmarks written for the request. A failure goes back to the picker as a repair, up to three tries, then Etch stops and says why.
Finished boards export as a KiCad project, Gerbers, drill files, and BOM, checked again on export, or as a GLB 3D model. Parts can be questioned in place, solder mask, silkscreen, and finish can be restyled live, and a library holds 135 open-source boards as real KiCad projects, each credited to its author and license.
Alternatives
Compare side by side- cursor-for-pcb
A chat-first PCB tool built on SKiDL and kiutils with a built-in router, rather than an agent team that picks real parts and checks its own work.
- hw-codesign
Agentic co-design from brief to KiCad, firmware, and 3D review, rather than an agent team that builds a board from one sentence.
- kicad-agent
A Pydantic AI agent that edits a real KiCad board with a live review UI, rather than an agent team with a picker, a scout, and a lead.
- hardware-foundry
A fifteen-agent platform covering BOM, firmware, STL, and assembly docs, rather than an agent team focused on one board in 3D.
- copper-mcp
A local-first MCP platform where generated work stays an immutable candidate until applied, rather than an agent team that builds and checks the board itself.
Recurring errors it addresses
Error Index entries this tool is built to reduce or work around.
- Interactive routing creates unwanted micro-segments and awkward paths that take time to clean up.Error Index
- Grid snap and move commands can disconnect items or reposition them in unwanted ways.Error Index
- GUI lag, occasional freezes, and sluggish editor switching interrupt concentration.Error Index
- Wayland/NVIDIA users report graphical glitches, flicker, or instability.Error Index
Sources
Not verified
- License: the GitHub API returns no license and no LICENSE file was found in the repo, so no license is stated.
- Pricing: none stated on the repo; the live site was not separately read for pricing.
- Real user voices: no real linked post read for this page; the only open issue is a maintainer self-hosting pull request.
- No GitHub releases exist, so latest release fields are null.
- A named individual builder beyond the repository owner handle PranavAchar01
Last verified November 6, 2026. Listings are informational. The evidence score measures public, verifiable evidence and is not an endorsement or a compatibility claim.