# The harness that makes AI effective in PCB design

Circuitly is the harness for PCB design: agents grounded in your native ECAD
files, verified by deterministic checks, and gated by engineer approval. In
hardware, small mistakes lead to big disasters, and slow iteration kills
momentum. Circuitly puts agents to work in your existing electronics ecosystem
so you ship better, faster.

- Start a schematic review: https://circuitly.com/signup
- Talk to us: https://cal.com/james-pentalow/30min
- Machine-readable summary: https://circuitly.com/llms.txt

## Agentic circuit design

- **Context-aware design reviews** — findings land ranked, wired to the exact
  part, with a one-click diff.
- **Traceable decisions** — routing, schematics, and layout checked against
  stock, PLM constraints, and your libraries.
- **The harness for AI in electronics** — agents grounded in real parts, real
  tolerances, real boards.
- **CAD-agnostic, in the browser** — native KiCad, Altium, and Cadence files
  under version control. No importing.

### How teams use Circuitly

Start with a review, build your library to your standards, or make Circuitly
the harness for your whole AI strategy. Engineers stay in the loop at every
step.

1. **Design reviews** — schematic, PCB, and whole-design reviews with full
   context from your PLM and Git: requirements, BOM data, and revision history
   included.
2. **AI library creation** — create symbols and footprints to your own
   standards and taste. Iterate with agents and skills that capture your
   conventions and enforce them across your global library.
3. **Circuitly as the harness** — Circuitly manages the context and tools
   agents need to evaluate real engineering trade-offs across schematic,
   layout, sourcing, and PLM, so AI carries the design from first concept to
   production.

## A chatbot can give you answers but it can't do the work

A board has thousands of iterative trade-offs. You need agents that can plan
with you and produce results. Circuitly harnesses specialized agents with
tools that know electronics and can act directly on your visual design files.
Circuitly works where the design actually lives: on schematics, netlists,
layout, and routing, with rules and parts data in scope.

- **ERC doesn't need an opinion.** Pin-type conflicts, logic levels across
  voltage domains, pad count against the datasheet pinout, decoupling per
  power pin, resistor dissipation against package rating, MPN lifecycle and
  stock. Written once as a rule, enforced on every revision.
- **Proposals carry their reasoning.** Past "will it build?", good is
  subjective: what a clean symbol or footprint looks like, which layout
  trade-off to take. Engineers legitimately disagree here. Agents propose with
  reasoning attached, learn your taste as you iterate, and leave the call to
  you.

The harness knows which is which. Every agentic proposal must pass all
standard electrical and design rule checks and land as a reviewable diff:
judgment where it belongs, proof everywhere else.

## From your design data to a published change

Start wherever your designs live: upload files directly, connect a Git
repository, or let us connect your parts database in a way that meets your
security requirements. The same harness carries value across the electronics
lifecycle, from review and library work to schematic edits, layout, and
publishing to PLM.

1. **Bring your design data** — upload Altium, Cadence, or KiCad designs
   directly, connect cloud or on-prem Git, or link your parts database and
   PLM. Circuitly loads the native files, structure, and revision history into
   the workspace.
2. **Review and plan** — agents analyze the design, surface stability,
   reliability, and supply-chain risks, and organize the findings into areas
   for investigation. Engineers ask follow-up questions, compare options, and
   guide the plan before any change is made.
3. **Update your schematics** — agents research datasheets, create or update
   symbols and footprints, and edit the schematic to the approved plan.
4. **Update your boards** — Circuitly coordinates specialized tools and
   agents, including DeepPCB, to update placement and routing. Results are
   verified against the project's design rules and your engineering
   preferences.
5. **Publish the changes** — Circuitly prepares the updated design files and
   BOM data and sends them to connected systems such as Duro for review and
   approval.
6. **Choose your deployment** — run Circuitly in the public cloud, or deploy
   it inside your own infrastructure with supported models.

**Agents do the work. Engineers hold the merge.** Agents investigate, propose,
and edit; deterministic checks verify; you review and approve what gets
published. Delegation without loss of control.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is Circuitly?

Circuitly is a harness for AI in PCB design: a workspace where agents review
and edit designs directly in native Altium, Cadence, and KiCad files. Every
change is traceable, verified against your design rules, and gated by engineer
approval.

### How is this different from a chatbot or AI copilot?

A chatbot gives advice; you still do the work. Circuitly's agents act on your
actual files, with the requirements, datasheets, BOM data, and supply feeds an
answer depends on. Their work lands as a reviewable change, not a paragraph.

### Which ECAD tools are supported?

Agents work natively in Altium, Cadence, and KiCad designs, uploaded directly
or connected through Git. Designs stay in standard formats: no proprietary
intermediate format, no lock-in.

### What can the agents actually do?

Review schematics and boards, research datasheets, create symbols and
footprints to your standards, edit schematics against an approved plan,
coordinate placement and routing with tools like DeepPCB, check BOMs against
sourcing data, and publish results to systems like Duro.

### How do agents produce human-quality designs?

Circuitly encodes industry, category, and component-specific rules and skills:
how a buck converter wants to be laid out, what a clean connector footprint
looks like, which clearances a part class needs. These drive the constraint
system and a force-directed graph of the design, so agents place, route, and
edit toward layouts an engineer would sign off on, not just ones that pass
DRC.

### Which AI models does Circuitly use?

The right one for each task. The harness benchmarks models against real
electronics work: datasheet reasoning, part research, schematic edits. Each
task runs on the model that performs best. As models evolve, the harness
re-tunes; your workflow doesn't change.

### Can we self-host? Is our design data safe?

Yes. Run Circuitly in the public cloud or deploy it inside your own
infrastructure with supported models, so designs never leave your network.
Every agent action is recorded and reversible.

## Get started

Bring AI into your electronics design process as a pragmatic partner. Upload
your design files and see findings on your own board in minutes, or work with
us: we map your current workflows, define the metrics that matter, and build
your team's AI maturity in electronics design.

- Start a schematic review: https://circuitly.com/signup
- Talk to us: https://cal.com/james-pentalow/30min
- Team: https://circuitly.com/team
- Blog: https://circuitly.com/blog