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An LLM-Powered Tool to Catch PCB Schematic Mistakes

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HN · launched Nov 28, 2025 · 55 upvotes (top 16%) · 2 views

Niche: computer-aided design software · 169 launches, 12 in the last 7 days ▼ -57% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Manufacturing
  • Dev tools
  • B2B
  • AI-native
  • Commercial product

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 169 launches in computer-aided design software →

Could you build this?

No Reliable PCB schematic verification requires parsing proprietary ECAD file formats (KiCad, Altium), extracting complex multimodal pinout/electrical constraints from thousands of arbitrary PDF datasheets, and verifying circuit topology without fatal hallucinations.

What it would actually take: The system needs netlist and schematic AST parsers for Altium/KiCad, a specialized PDF extraction engine to parse pinout tables, electrical characteristics, and application schematics from component datasheets, and a hybrid neuro-symbolic engine to compare circuit graphs against operational limits. The core difficulty is achieving high precision without false positives/negatives in safety-critical hardware validation where an AI hallucination destroys physical boards. This requires specialized electrical engineering, hardware CAD internals, and deep document-parsing ML pipelines.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Traditional ERC (Electrical Rule Check) in KiCAD, GPT-4.1 API with schematic screenshots, General-purpose chat LLMs

Concerns raised: High token consumption and context limits (330k tokens consumed in single test), Structural analysis errors (e.g., misidentifying power paths, hallucinating components), Vague usage limits and pricing model unclear, Poor accuracy on complex designs; minimal improvement over GPT-4, False positives/negatives without performance benchmarks provided

Feature requests: Fetch datasheets automatically via netlist PDF links instead of requiring uploads, Support full KiCAD/Altium board files with footprint and layout analysis, Structured checklist output per page/sub-circuit instead of chat interface, Classify findings by severity levels (advisory vs critical flags), Include annotated PDF output with grouped calculations and notes

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 1350 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #188 of 1351 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 30 days after the earliest competitor.

Related data

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