OpenROAD-MCP: Skill for Claude Code

.claude/skills/setup-openroad-mcp/SKILL.md

setup-openroad-mcp is a skill for Claude Code from The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP. It costs 240 tokens per session (1,318 once invoked), scanned A, original, BSD-3-Clause.

A setup guide for connecting an AI assistant to OpenROAD, an open-source chip physical-design tool, through an MCP server. OpenROAD turns chip layouts into physical designs and reports such as timing and power results.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to install and configure OpenROAD MCP, verify Node.js and OpenROAD prerequisites, and enable RTL-to-GDS flows when ORFS is available.
Why use it?
It checks required software and configures the connection so the assistant can run or inspect chip-design workflows.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; built for cline.

This is The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on OpenROAD-MCP itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything OpenROAD-MCP configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP/main/.claude/skills/setup-openroad-mcp/SKILL.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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Per session 240 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,318 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00240 $0.01318
Opus 5 $0.00120 $0.00659
Sonnet 5 $0.00048 $0.00264
Haiku 4.5 $0.00024 $0.00132

Measured 6d ago against content hash 95eea2806104, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

setup-openroad-mcp 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 6d ago.

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.

.claude/skills/setup-openroad-mcp/SKILL.md · 121 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Set Up OpenROAD MCP

This skill installs and configures the OpenROAD MCP server, a Model Context Protocol server that connects an AI assistant to the OpenROAD physical-design tools and OpenROAD-flow-scripts (ORFS).

The published server runs via npxthere is no need to clone this repo for normal use. Configuration is just: check prerequisites → register the server with the MCP client → verify the connection.

Step 1: Check prerequisites

Run these checks and report what's missing before touching any config.

Node.js 22+ (required — runs the npx distribution):

node --version

If it's older than v22 or missing, install Node 22+ (via the official installer, nvm, or your package manager) before continuing.

OpenROAD in PATH (required — the actual layout engine):

command -v openroad && openroad -version

If openroad is not found, it must be installed and on PATH. Point the user to the OpenROAD build guide. Note the directory from command -v openroad — you may need it in Step 2 for GUI-launched clients that don't inherit a login shell PATH.

OpenROAD-flow-scripts / ORFS (optional — enables full RTL-to-GDS flows and report images):

ls "${ORFS_FLOW_PATH:-$HOME/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/flow}" 2>/dev/null \
  && echo "ORFS found" || echo "ORFS not found (optional)"

ORFS_FLOW_PATH defaults to ~/OpenROAD-flow-scripts/flow. If ORFS lives elsewhere, note the path for Step 2. See the ORFS build guide.

Step 2: Register the server with the MCP client

Ask the user which MCP client they use if it's not obvious. The per-client configuration snippets and file locations are maintained as a single source of truth in the README's "Supported MCP Clients" section. Read that section, then apply the snippet for the client the user named (it covers Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Cline / Roo Code, Continue / PearAI, Zed, and Docker).

Read the full file on GitHub · 121 lines

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.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 121 lines · 240 tokens per session scan A 95eea2806104

Subscribe to this mod's changes

setup-openroad-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-MCP (17 stars, last pushed today), licensed BSD-3-Clause. It adds 240 tokens to every session and 1,318 once invoked, about $0.0012 per session on Opus 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 2026-09-04.

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