kicad_skills

Usage guides

One guide per area of the toolkit. They cover the part a --help listing cannot: which command to reach for, what order to do things in, how to read the output, and what the tool cannot check for you.

Plain Markdown, and the source of truth — read them here, in your editor, or hand them to whatever assistant you use. Nothing about them is specific to one tool.

Guide Covers
datasheet-analysis Pulling text, parameter tables, figures and page images out of a datasheet PDF
spice-simulation Writing and running SPICE decks, reading the measurements, Monte Carlo and temperature sweeps
kicad-schematic-review Reading a schematic, running ERC, and reviewing a circuit properly
kicad-pcb-review DRC, layout heuristics, and what to look for in the rendered artwork
kicad-fabrication-output Producing and checking the manufacturing package
eda-environment The container, pinning the KiCad version, and troubleshooting

Each file carries a short YAML header (name, description). That is a plain Markdown front-matter block — GitHub renders it as a table, editors ignore it — and it is what lets a tool decide which guide is relevant without reading all six.

Using them with an assistant

Nothing needs installing: point your tool at this directory, or let it read AGENTS.md, which names the guides.

Claude Code is the one tool that wants a specific layout — it discovers skills at .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md. bin/install-skills.sh produces that layout from these files, as symlinks, so there is never a second copy to keep in step:

./bin/install-skills.sh                              # this checkout
./tools/kicad_skills/bin/install-skills.sh           # a project using the submodule
./bin/install-skills.sh --dest .cursor/rules --copy  # some other tool's directory

The generated .claude/skills/ is git-ignored on purpose: it is an adapter, not content. Delete it and re-run the script whenever you like.

And if you use no assistant at all, the guides still stand on their own — they are how a careful engineer would use these commands.