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Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards
- tadasv 28d agoI used claude and gemini to edit/debug kicad schematics. And it was pretty good. What is the point of this agent?
- guhidalg 28d agoSome PM realized that agents will not push back against waterfall style project planning, so now we get an agent for all possible versions of waterfall projects.
- animeshchouhan 28d agofair critique but copperhead works as a feedback loop: design, verify, revise and repeat. closer to an engineering control loop than waterfall with an agent on top :)
- toss1 28d agoWhen it gets to the end of the design loops, can it run simulations and tests, or is that out of scope i.e., for another product? (I didn't notice testing on a very quick peruse, but that doesn't mean I didn't simply miss it)
- animeshchouhan 28d agowe are building tool plane integrations around the same. stay tuned!
- TechSquidTV 28d agoIs it doing any circuit simulation or anything?
- animeshchouhan 28d agowe are building tool plane integrations around the same. stay tuned!
- animeshchouhan 28d agocopperhead isn't just a wrapper around claude or gpt. it combines model intelligence with its own hardware IR, deterministic engines and continuous verification.
- j16sdiz 28d agoUser just couldn't care less. Do it have extra feature? Speed? Ease of use?
- animeshchouhan 28d agowe have the wrapper orchestrator + additional specialized tools. so yeah we are better than just wrappers.
- electric_mayhem 28d agoI use a jigsaw to cut wood. It works pretty good. What’s the point of a table saw?
- mitxela 28d agoYou joke but my coping saw cuts wood much faster than any of my normal saws. I don't know a lot about saws, I presume it's the type of blade on it. And I do indeed have three saws, which is a lot for someone who doesn't know much about saws. One that says it's good for cutting metal, one for wood and one for tight corners in wood (a coping saw).
- animeshchouhan 28d agowait are you the mitxela from youtube fluid simulation pendant video
- dghlsakjg 28d agoYour coping saw probably has a pretty thin and narrow blade. That minimizes friction on the non cutting surface, and the amount of material removed because of the narrow blade.
- mikeayles 28d agoThe space is definitely heating up. Flux.ai being the incumbent Silixon based out of the UK have been showing demos Quilter and DeepPCB for layout The recent OpenAI demo... I went the other way and pre-designed sub circuits with a set of rules that allows simple merge assembly, unfortunately I didn't have the time or budget to continue with it, but I took the constrained approach as with hardware, things can't be 99%. The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy. Any questions about the use of AI for any form of automation on forums/Reddit get shot down instantly and the OP's told 'skill issue' more or less. In my opinion, just as with software, most work is simple and should be automated, there will always be a need for the real engineering when it comes to high specification work, high volume optimisation and hardware debug (although Claude code is pretty handy at driving a Jlink)
- animeshchouhan 28d ago[flagged]
- Aurornis 28d ago> The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy. Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done. You also need to understand the history of autorouting technology for PCBs. Autorouters with auto layout have been around in many forms for years. Their output never compares to a skilled EE doing it manually. The gap between autorouter output and skilled operator output is even bigger than the gap between a good developer and average AI codegen slop. I’m interested in this space, but even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go for boards more complex than simple hobby boards. I do think this is going to be good for hobby people doing simple PCBs though
- Joel_Mckay 28d agoNP-hard problems are still NP-hard even with magical LLM pixie sprinkles. =3
- danielmorozoff 28d agoHas anyone had experience with Copperhead vs Astra and kicad? Looking for a similar tool soon
- animeshchouhan 28d agowe're developing https://copperbench.org https://copperbench.org - an open-source benchmark for evaluating ai agents on real, verifiable hardware design tasks.
- danielmorozoff 28d agoany idea how it stacks up against zoo / zookeeper? https://zoo.dev/research/zookeeper https://zoo.dev/research/zookeeper
- leobuskin 28d agommm, someone decided to reuse `zookeeper` name, seriously?
- TechSquidTV 28d agoThis is what I want to know as well. I'm about to kick off a project or two.
- ajnin 28d agoCopperhead directly edits the KiCad files so that is the CLI version of that Astra demo.
- animeshchouhan 28d agonot quite. copperhead operates on its own IR, which then compiles to KiCad files.
- ecesena 28d agoI do not have experience with Copperhead, but I made 2 PCBs with Claude. He made a py script that generates Kicad sources, I ended up generating all files (in particular schematics and PCB) from a shared netlist, and use Kicad cli to validate and generate gerbers. I manufactured both PCBs via PCBWay (Claude also red all the specs and configured the constraints accordingly) and both work. I'm pretty impressed, especially because I've never done a PCB myself and didn't know I could. What I was doing manually, co-working with Claude, was placing and routing (I was doing those via Kicad, then saving, then Claude was re-importing my work in his py files).
- Tiberium 28d agohttps://github.com/i2cjak/T3CAD https://github.com/i2cjak/T3CAD seems like another promising project
- tylergetsay 28d agoCan I take the output of this and get a fully assembled board mailed to me? Thats my dream...
- animeshchouhan 28d agosoon :)
- seidleroni 28d agoIt seems like this is just controlling KiCad. Assuming this produces a BOM as well, you could take the output files, send them to a board house like PCBWay or JLPCB and get the boards stuffed and shipped to you. The board houses may have questions for you that may be difficult for you to answer, but theoretically you could answer those with AI and get fully assembled boards delivered right to your doorstep.
- animeshchouhan 28d agonot quite. copperhead operates on its own hardware IR, compiles verified KiCad files and generates manufacturing outputs. we're also building a design house around it to close the loop with fabs, handle DFM questions and eventually let you hit "order" and receive fully assembled boards!
- 4b11b4 28d agoPretty much with the JLC plugin to KiCad.
- dghlsakjg 28d agoYes. Look at jlcpcb or other Chinese assembly houses. If you stay within their component library it is dead easy, just upload your gerber and BOM, and you can have assembled boards within a week or so. Slightly more difficult if they have to order parts for your BOM, but still not really that hard.
- tylergetsay 27d agoif I needed something on the board that was outside the component library of the assembly house, can I ship it to them? or have them arrange for it somehow? How constrained is the component library?
- anirudhojhaanil 28d agoWith AI enabled consumer hardware usecases going to explode this is something super relevant. At least 5 startups have pitched their wearables to me and they could definitely use this
- Joel_Mckay 28d agoDesign for Manufacturability (DFM) will determine if they generate a viable product. Hardware is difficult, with a success rate around 1:66 for a startup. It is a good idea to consult with a contract manufacturer engineering team early, and stop wasting peoples time including their own. I have also seen people re-brand China pad-printed generic products, and claim they needed investor help buying a shipping container full of cheap stuff or outright e-waste. Careful, especially if you see multiple versions or the same product pop up at the same time. Best of luck =3
- utopiah 28d agoWill it though? Do you think people will actually be more creative with this or will we get yet another e-ink device with a slightly different form factor, or a "less than a phone" with different constraints? In the end is the PCB design the bottleneck to create new devices or is it mostly about available components and their price?
- delfinom 27d agoPCB design is no bottleneck. These services are solutions in search of a problem. There are already millions of vendors all over the world making infinite variations of PCB designs for the same/similar product. You can hire a design shop in China for peanuts to make a variation as well. Ultimately the bottleneck is the consumer does not care for infinite variations. The vast majority just want a "top rated product" at the lowest price. Which is whatever Amazon sorts their results as or whatever the Jones are buying that they need to keep up with. The biggest driver of "unique product" (not just the 9 millionth clone product) commercial success is marketing, it is branding, it is finding a unique niche, it is timing, it is existing social & business relationships to drive sales.
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- motoboi 28d ago"hardware as fast as software". Please no, lol. I've imagined a chip running as slow as python.
- FacelessJim 28d agoI’ve read it the same way. Definitely a double edged slogan.
- Joel_Mckay 28d agoLM555 or 300MB nodejs App on a $300 SoC... the choice is clear... lol =3
- animeshchouhan 28d agohaha nice catch but this is about development speed
- tortasaur 28d agomaybe something like "make hardware as quickly as software" would be clearer
- theandrewbailey 28d agoOr worse: hardware as slow as any average, bloated Electron "app".
- frangonf 27d agoI've imagined bugs releasing magic smoke faster than usual.
- jimberlage 28d agoThis is probably not the primary way people use the tool, but if I log in (desktop, Chrome on macOS), click "Start a board" on the sidebar, and go to click any of the inputs, I can't type text in them (the inputs are "Start from an example", "What are you building", and "The brief".
- mrnotcrazy 28d agoIf you scroll down they want you to "Connect copperhead to GitHub first." The bottom should have a page where you can give them access to a repo for handling stuff.
- fwip 28d agoMight be a better website if it wasn't all clearly AI-copy. "Nothing commits without its gate."
- animeshchouhan 28d agothe website isn't the product. try copperhead and judge the engineering :)
- hilariously 28d agoThe website is the marketing for the product, most people see that first, and they wont go further if your front door is festooned with goofball stuff.
- animeshchouhan 28d agofixed it!
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- mattanimation 28d ago[flagged]
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- animeshchouhan 28d agowhen LLM calls are the bottleneck, the programming language stops mattering.
- extralongdivisi 28d agoSame. Software moves so fast that its actually an anti feature. Libraries and SDKs measure lifetime support in years, but industrial hardware support *at minimum* is a decade. A lot of these new startups dont understand that established industry wont use them unless they known this shiny new system wont ve abandoned in a few years. On the other hand, softwate devs trying to quickly make a product have something to get them going.
- aitchnyu 28d agoWhy would somebody ever use a hosted version? I see "One-click gerber, DXF/STEP, render and BOM export" and "Altium support beyond KiCad" in cloud plans, dunno if they are compelling.
- krttherealest 28d agoit would propably help thousands of ppl ngl
- avsteele 28d agoInterested in the evaluations of anyone actually using this. I tested over the weekend and Astra can - create and modify schematics from instructions - place components and route traces out of the box, just via normal 'computer use'. I'm not satisfied with the routing but it isn't terrible.
- nullbio 28d agoLet me know when I can build my own Cerebras chips, because we're never going to see them as consumers, otherwise. Yes yes, I know, leagues apart. Still though... One can dream.
- hvcxdfvc 28d ago[dead]
- m132 28d ago[flagged]
- tomhow 28d agoPlease don't post shallow dismissals or focus on trivialities. Let's focus on the substance of the project. It's a good sign that an early stage project hasn't devoted a lot of time or cost into their logo.
- m132 27d agoI'm sorry, but going on that website made me feel like I was being greeted by an AI support technician or recruiter. I understand—these days, there are more reasons to vibe a landing page than not. To many, however, this page is going to be their first encounter with the project. While it sure is shallow to judge a book solely by its cover, in this case, the cover just blatantly screams "we haven't even tried"... Can you really blame people for not looking beyond it if even its own creator gave it a similar amount of attention? Especially in 2026, when everything preys on your attention and generating plausibly-looking low-effort projects has never been easier?
- tomhow 27d agoWe just need you to observe the guidelines, no matter the topic or no matter how much it seems justifiable to overlook them in a particular case. They've been largely constant for nearly 20 years, and HN only continues to be a place where people want to discuss important topics because we have guidelines and uphold them daily. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- m132 27d agoFair. I wish low quality submissions received similar treatment to low quality comments, or at least had their own category, separate from the main page.
- dhon_ 27d agoIs copperhead related to this Copperbrain project? https://github.com/deadbringer17/Copperbrain https://github.com/deadbringer17/Copperbrain They have similar names, seem to solve similar problems and both have first commit within a few days in July. One is Python and the other Typescript though and they don't seem to be forks.
- rrr_oh_man 27d agoChatGPT based naming
- seveibar 27d agoMany of the new agentic electronic design tools are KiCad-based, which is fine, but for people creating new EDA tools I'd encourage them to take a look at tscircuit (open-source, MIT). KiCad wasn't built for AI-gen with things like automatic routing/placement, supplier footprint orientation checking, connector orientation checking and other features that will be required as more people expect extensive validation for AI-generated designs. KiCad could add these things, but they've got decades of baggage and many Altium features to pull in. I'm worried that we're all getting bound by KiCad s-exprs
- animeshchouhan 27d ago[dead]
- edg5000 27d agoJust regular coding agents are really good with Skidl schematics and can review layouts well. I'm not sure why you'd want a specialised environment for this.
- mlaux 27d agoWhile this new competency of LLMs in EDA is objectively neat, I can't help but feel a little sad about the way this is going. Electronics projects are my refuge from the new hyper-speed low-quality software world. I want to "just not use it" and continue to enjoy electronics, but if I ever want to turn one of my ideas into a product, I'll be up against people who are building extremely quickly and to a lower quality standard. Yes, potential users of a cool new gadget care about having their problems solved above all else, but I can tell this is going to turn into another field we're all here saying "what happened to craft?" about, and idk, I just don't like it. And this is coming from someone who enjoys (turn by turn) LLM-boosted programming.
- webprofusion 27d agoI really want to like this but the AI written copy is painful. "The problem, and who hurts". Me that's who, come on guys.
- kanwisher 27d agoWe are working on a similar product http://fabplane.com http://fabplane.com Goal is to make it easy for users to remix circuits, like say you want to make a mod for a retro video game system, you can fork off of an existing mod and just change it, and we guide you through getting it printed at pcbway or jlcpcb.
- vovankuvalda 27d agoHow reliable was the re-import step? Once you’d placed and routed things manually in KiCad, could you ask Claude for another change without it disturbing that work? Did you need to explicitly mark which parts should stay untouched?
- AxonOSorg 27d agoCool
- marcy_74 25d agoPlacement was NP-hard before LLMs and it still is. The real question is whether they beat classical autorouters on anything.