Engineer wires Claude Code to Altium with ~600 tools — it designs a full 4-layer PCB from a spec
Salitronic · reddit · 2026-10-28
Electronics engineer Salitronic open-sourced eda-agent, an MCP server that lets Claude Code work live inside Altium Designer. In the demo, Claude takes a written spec for a 54mm round LED board and does the whole job: builds the parts library from scratch, draws the schematic, places 61 LEDs in rings, routes USB as a 90-ohm pair, pours ground planes, passes DRC, and exports Gerbers/drill/BOM/pick-and-place/STEP — then fixes everything on a review pass.
Key lessons from getting Claude this far:
- Datasheets first: Claude must look up real component values; the server reminds it every 10 calls.
- Batch tools matter: one call placing 60 wires is 10–100x faster and keeps context clean.
- Checkable feedback: schematics drawn from templates and wiring validated against real pins before rendering.
- No-API spots: Claude reads the screen and drives actual menus and dialogs.
Apache-2.0, works with any MCP client; KiCad and EasyEDA Pro backends also available.
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