Stillwind
PCB part selection as constraint solving
Details
- External ID
- 48923872
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Stillwind
- Website domain
- stillwind.ai
- Launched
- July 15, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 7
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.3972520908004779
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Hi HN,We run an electronic parts search engine, and Stillwind Builder is our attempt to automate the selection step itself: it turns a project description into a PCB bill of materials.At its core, it frames part selection as a constraint satisfaction problem, since your picks depend on each other — a motor driver can't draw more current than the power source is rated for, and every part's supply pin has to be within the voltage range of the rail feeding it. Once the constraints are set up, we evaluate combinations of parts from our database against them. If no combination works, the system adjusts the constraints and tries again. At the end it spits out a BOM.You can try it directly at the link — the purple examples run with one click, or you can describe any project you like. We wrote up how it works in more detail here: https://stillwind.ai/blog/stillwind-system-builderWe'll be in the comments for the next few hours and happy to answer questions. If you'd want to use this on real projects, we're open to design partnerships: contact[@]stillwind.ai
Enrichment
- Theme
- property maintenance and home services
- Vertical
- Manufacturing
- Function
- Workflow automation
- Audience
- B2B
- AI stance
- AI feature
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- pcb component selection tool
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Automating PCB footprint verification to strict IPC-7351B standards from unstructured component datasheets requires highly specialized EE domain knowledge and precision mechanical/electronic parsing engines.
What it would actually take: The pipeline requires computer vision and document parsing models capable of reading complex multi-page PDF engineering drawings and mechanical tolerance tables accurately. It pairs this with a deterministic constraint satisfaction solver (or SMT solver like Z3) and geometric CAD generator supporting formats like KiCad, Altium, and IPC standards. Developing this system requires seasoned electronic hardware engineers, CAD library specialists, and advanced technical document extraction AI.
Discussion
5 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Equation generation reliability and accuracy guarantees for electrical constraints, Component placement and routing still unsolved problems, Missing equations or crucial constraints in system generation
Feature requests: End-to-end manufacturing and delivery (PCB design, sourcing, fabrication), PCB design and routing automation, Expand component database coverage across all categories
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 20 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #9 of 21 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 253 days after the earliest competitor.
- BOM to PCBA Quote · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Make Electrical Component Selection Suck Less · hn · 2025-11-04 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- BoardDoctor · ph · 2026-09-18 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- I designed my own 3D printer motherboard · hn · 2025-12-06 · 127 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- pcb-layout-design · github · 2026-09-13 · 80 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- PCForge · ph · 2026-09-23 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- Axal: Designing and Getting PCB's in China is Dead · yc · 2026-07-30 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- Pick and Pull : Junkyard Finder · ph · 2026-09-16 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.33
Other launches for this product
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a workflow automation tool for Real estate yet.