kicad-agent
Agent-driven KiCad PCB design with a Pydantic AI agent, a git-versioned workspace, and a live review UI.
What it does and how it connects
kicad-agent is a research harness for AI-driven board design. A Pydantic AI agent edits a real KiCad 10 board through CAD tools for placement, routing, outline, zones, and silkscreen, while a web UI streams the board, the agent's reasoning, and every version it commits. The user can click any pad, track, or via to leave a review comment, and the agent reads those comments on its next pass. A goal loop keeps it working until machine-checkable criteria pass, such as DRC counts, board size, distances, regions, and open comments.
Every edit is a commit in the design's own git repository, so version means the same thing to the agent, the UI, and the user. The headless agent core pairs with a live web UI offering CopilotKit chat, a 2D board viewer with review pins, measure mode, a version browser, a goal editor, and a three.js 3D viewer. A demo pipeline takes a 555 LED blinker from parts search to a routed, DRC-clean board, and a PCB knowledge base of 25 rules and a skill covers stackup, placement, routing, DFM, EMC, thermal, high-speed, and more.
Alternatives
Compare side by side- copper-mcp
A local-first MCP platform where generated work stays an immutable candidate until applied, rather than an agent that edits the board with a goal loop.
- cursor-for-pcb
A chat-first PCB tool built on SKiDL and kiutils with a built-in router, rather than a Pydantic AI agent with a git-versioned workspace.
- kicad-mcp-pro
An MCP server with profile-gated tools for KiCad workflows, rather than an agent harness with a live review UI.
- hw-codesign
Agentic co-design from brief to KiCad, firmware, and 3D review, rather than an agent that edits a live board under a goal loop.
- etch
A team of agents that picks real KiCad parts and routes a board in 3D, rather than a single Pydantic AI agent with review pins.
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
- 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
Sources
Not verified
- Pricing: none stated on the repo.
- Real user voices: no real linked post read for this page; open issues are dependency updates.
- No GitHub releases exist, so latest release fields are null.
- A named individual builder beyond the repository owner handle roboalchemist
Last verified November 6, 2026. Listings are informational. The evidence score measures public, verifiable evidence and is not an endorsement or a compatibility claim.