trace (mteichtahl)

trace runs a repository by itself and gives Claude the tools to do electronics work in it. A pushed branch gets its pull request, stacked on the open pull request it builds on when it builds on one. A PR merges itself when its required check passes, bottom of a stack first, and open PRs are brought up to date one at a time. A failing build is triaged: flaky failures are re-run, and real ones go to Claude, which fixes them. Deploys run behind a risk check, a smoke test and an automatic rollback, and a person is asked only when a project's rules say so, or when the loop is stuck.

The tools cover KiCad work such as reading schematics and boards, ERC and DRC, BOM and fabrication outputs, plus component calculators, SPICE and Verilog simulation, a datasheet library and parts database shared by every project, hardware-in-the-loop over serial, CAN, and SCPI power supplies, scopes and meters, and the firmware loop of build, flash and logs. They are reachable from the tracectl command line and, for Claude Code, from the trace MCP server.

The loop is generalized from the one that runs the author's Potroller project. Installing needs AWS credentials and one GitHub token, and every GitHub Actions job runs on an AWS CodeBuild runner in the user's own account. The installer is a page served from the user's own machine, and the README documents the token permissions each step needs and what happens without them.