A beginner-focused workflow for designing small printed circuit boards, or PCBs, from a written specification into KiCad files ready for review and fabrication. KiCad is software for drawing electronic schematics and board layouts; ERC and DRC are checks for electrical and physical design errors.

Use it to create or modify small development boards, module carriers, audio boards, and sensor boards. It covers requirements, pin and part mapping, scripted schematic and layout generation, ERC/DRC checks, 3D review, and fab-order files.

It replaces manual layout work with repeatable scripts and shared source files, reducing the risk that the schematic, board, enclosure, and firmware disagree. It also includes checks and fabrication-package preparation.

vibe-pcb — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by luckiday/vibe-hardware

Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/luckiday/vibe-hardware

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luckiday/vibe-hardware/vibe-pcb.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 409 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 3,912 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00409	$0.03912
Opus 5.5	$0.00164	$0.01565
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00082	$0.00782
Haiku 4.5	$0.00041	$0.00391

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 698fd3599bf8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vibe-pcb scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 18 executable files (scripts/_kicad_env.sh, scripts/autoroute.sh, scripts/belly_check.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/vibe-pcb/SKILL.md · 243 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 243 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Text → PCB (beginner + Claude Code → fab order)

A reproducible pipeline for small boards (module-carriers, audio boards, sensor tiles). You write the intent in prose; Claude Code emits KiCad by script, drives ERC/DRC to clean, reviews it, fits it in 3D, and packages the fab order. You never hand-place a track in a GUI.

Proven on a 70×70 mm ESP32-S3 + dual-codec speaker board, generated end to end with the method below (contracts → relations → gates → scripted route → DRC 0/0). The war stories throughout are from that build.

Why "by script", not the KiCad GUI

The .kicad_sch / .kicad_pcb are outputs (gitignored, regenerated). The sources of truth are data files + two small generators:

Source	Owns	Consumed by
`../cad/constraints.yaml`	outline, mount holes, port/window positions, keepouts	`pcblib.Board` draws them; the enclosure model reads the same file
`pinmap.yaml`	signal ↔ GPIO (the pcb→firmware contract)	firmware header; `plm_check.py` cross-checks
`parts.yaml`	ref → footprint/value/pad→net map/cluster/DNP/LCSC	both generators — sch and pcb cannot drift
`gen_sch.py`	symbol grid + labels (via `pcblib.sch`)	`.kicad_sch`
`gen_pcb.py`	placement relations + routing (via `pcblib`)	`.kicad_pcb`, `placement.json`, `board.step`

The representation rule: relations in, coordinates out. A language model is worst at one-shot absolute geometry and best at relations ("the cap hugs the codec's supply pins", "USB-C sits at the contract's port"). scripts/pcblib/ keeps the relations as code and computes the millimetres:

from pcblib import (load_constraints, load_parts, Board, Cluster, place,
                    beside, align_pads, row, at_edge, scorecard,
                    export_placement, wire, via, gnd_pours)
C, P = load_constraints("../../cad/constraints.yaml"), load_parts("../parts.yaml")
brd = Board(pcb, C)                     # outline/holes/keepouts FROM the contract
PWR = Cluster(brd, "PWR", (55, 25))     # cluster origins: the only tuned numbers
u5 = PWR.place("Package_TO_SOT_SMD", "SOT-223-3_TabPin2", "U5",
               value=P["U5"].value, nets=P.netmap("U5"))
beside(u5, c4, side="right", gap=0.7)   # positions computed off real courtyards
at_edge(brd, j1, "usb_c")               # x/y comes from constraints.yaml, not a literal
fails = scorecard(brd, budgets={"hpwl_mm": 2000})   # hard gates BEFORE copper
export_placement(brd, "../placement.json", kinds={...})  # evidence for plm/cad

Read the full file on GitHub · 243 lines

Files

What ships with it

25 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago Changed · +17 lines · +56 tokens per session 698fd3599bf8
2mo ago First seen · 226 lines · 353 tokens per session scan A 5d82c457aa55

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vibe-pcb is a skill published in the GitHub repository luckiday/vibe-hardware (7 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 409 tokens to every session and 3,912 once invoked, about $0.0016 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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