Adom Bridge — Altium Bridge

A reverse bridge that lets Adom Bridge (ab) — and the AI driving it — control the user's own Altium Designer on Windows: open and drive every design surface, author native .SchLib/.PcbLib libraries (symbols, footprints, STEP 3D bodies), place parts on schematics and boards, run compile/ERC and DRC, run OutJobs (Gerber, ODB++, NC drill, BOM, pick-and-place), and screenshot any window back to the AI.

Two artifacts on this page — which one do you want?

	Release ZIP (adom-bridge-altium-v*.zip)	Package (adom-wiki pkg install adom/altium-bridge)
What it is	The bridge runtime — the Python server + DelphiScript agent that drive Altium	Skills + docs only, for a container/agent
Who loads it	Adom Bridge downloads it via adom-bridge-altium-manifest.json	You, into a container, to teach an agent the altium_* verbs
Contains	server, handlers, agent template, process catalog parser	SKILL.md files (no binaries, no images)
You install it manually?	No — Bridge handles it	Yes

The package is not the bridge. Installing the package does not give you a working bridge; Adom Bridge loading the release zip does.

Altium Designer is the user's host app. The bridge detects an existing install (%ProgramFiles%\Altium\AD*\X2.EXE), launches it in the background, bootstraps a resident DelphiScript agent inside it (the REPL lane), and hands the AI 60 altium_* verbs.

• Page / docs: https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/altium-bridge
• Bridge SDK: https://wiki.adom.inc/adom/adom-bridge-sdk
• Verb namespace: altium_* · Status verb: altium_status · Health: GET /health
• Plan of record (every measured engine fact): the altium-bridge-plan skill in the package.

Every screenshot below is a real capture of Altium Designer 26.9.1 driven end-to-end through the bridge. Two parts appear, both imported from their wiki component pages and authored into native libraries by the bridge itself: the WCH CH340G (USB-serial SOP-16) and the Microchip LAN7800 (USB 3.1 → gigabit Ethernet, QFN-48 + EP) — the latter as ONE component with ten symbol display modes and seven footprint variants, each footprint carrying its own 3D body.

The window tour — one imported chip, every surface

Symbol — altium_show_symbol (authored by altium_create_symbol)

All 16 named pins (GND/TXD/RXD/V3/UD+/UD-/XI/XO · VCC/R232/RTS#/DTR#/DCD#/RI#/DSR#/CTS#).

Footprint — altium_show_footprint (authored by altium_create_footprint)

16 SOIC pads parsed from the component page's pads.json (mm → mil).

Library manager — altium_show_library / altium_list_library

Schematic — altium_place_on_sch

The symbol placed as U1 on a fresh sheet (per-primitive copy — the engine's group Replicate drops children; the bridge handles that for you).

Symbol variants — altium_build_symbol_modes

The LAN7800 as one component with ten display modes (Altium's alternate symbols): here the 4-side package look, geometry sized from the measured pin-name lengths so nothing collides.

2D board — altium_test_board / altium_swap_footprint

The LAN7800 -HV-SB-RR variant after two live footprint swaps on a wired 15×15 mm test board: rounded pads, sixteen through-hole heatsink vias in the EP (all designator 49 → the EP net), the silk pin-1 dot, and the PIN1 / GND_EP stub tracks that survived both swaps untouched.

3D board — the STEP body on a real PCB

And the underside — the sixteen drilled heatsink vias through the exposed pad. Real copper and drill objects, exactly what the drill file gets:

How it fits together

The bridge is a spawn.kind: python process Bridge launches on the user's machine (entrypoint: server.py, port: 0). It speaks HTTP (POST /command, GET /health) and reaches Altium through ranked control surfaces, lightest first:

Modal dialogs freeze the script engine, so every mutating verb scans for dialogs by PID and returns them with body screenshots (Altium paints dialog text; it is not exposed as text). A halted engine (DelphiScript runtime errors are modal) recovers with altium_agent_recover.

Verb reference

Board & schematic introspection (0.1.11): list_designators, component_data, component_pins, list_nets, net_connections, layers, copper_layers, read_rules, set_layer_visibility, footprint_primitives, schematic_data — read the live design as data (pads→nets, rules, layers, sheet components with pins), all in tens of milliseconds, no dialogs.

All 94 verbs (prefix altium_). Call altium_describe for the live catalog.

Readiness & lifecycle — readiness, status, launch, close, diagnostics, progress, agent_start/_stop/_status/_recover, license, signin_status, connect_workspace, uninstall

Surfaces — show_project, show_schematic, show_2d_board, show_3d_board, show_library, show_symbol, show_footprint, show_3d_chip, open_document, state, demo

Engine — eval, run_command, list_commands, run_script

Checks & outputs — compile (run_erc), run_drc, run_outjob, export_gerber, export_bom

Author libraries — create_symbol, create_footprint, add_body (STEP or extruded, persisted and centred on the pads), set_params, build_footprint (a whole footprint from a tools/kicad2altium.py spec: via pads by duplicate designator, rounded-rect pads, named mechanical layers), build_symbol_modes (one symbol, N display modes) + symbol_mode (switch + frame), add_models (N footprint variants on one part — the CHANGE PACKAGE equivalent), install_library, compile_intlib, extract_intlib, list_library, save

Manipulate libraries — clone_symbol (all display modes carried), rename_symbol, remove_symbol, read_symbol (pins/params/modes read-back), copy_footprint (pads + bodies + drawing), rename_footprint, remove_footprint, xcopy_footprint (cross-library), cleanup_libs, set_visibility, normalize_bodies, and import_part — one call: footprint spec + STEP + symbol + vendor params (Mouser preferred, DigiKey, LCSC)

Boards & placement — place_on_sch, place_on_pcb, test_board (fresh PcbDoc, board shape sized to the part, nets + stub tracks), board_shape, swap_footprint (change the package on a placed part; wiring survives), pcb_report (ground truth: pads, bodies, nets, tracks with bboxes)

Dialogs & desktop — check_dialogs, dismiss_dialogs

The dock bar card

The bridge is a card in the Hydrogen dock bar — the launcher rail on the right edge of the workspace — alongside KiCad and Fusion. It is in the curated fleet list (hydrogen-bootstrap/dock/apps.json, order 35, featured), so every Adom user's rail picks it up on the next poll, or instantly with Refresh list from wiki.

Clicking the card runs this repo's dockbar.json: an install-or-update step (adom-wiki pkg update altium-bridge || pkg install adom/altium-bridge — this is how the skillpack propagates to every container), then altium-dashboard serve --print-url, which self-backgrounds and prints its URL; the dock opens it in a webview tab and starts a named AI thread with the Altium prompt. The dashboard is the standard dock anatomy:

Progress for long verbs rides the Windows taskbar button (the app icon fills up), never a toast.

Web control — "Add to Altium library" from a wiki page

Component and molecule pages carry an EXPORTS TO: KiCad · Fusion · Altium row. The bridge's half is altium_install_library_bundle, the exact peer of kicad_install_library_bundle:

AdomWebControl.run('altium_install_library_bundle', { zipPath, libraryName, capture: true })
// → { success, symbols, footprints, intlibs, installed:[{lib,ok}], altiumRunning, restartNeeded, thumbnailDataUrl? }

The page fetches the bundle (<Lib>.SchLib + <Lib>.PcbLib, or an .IntLib), stages it on the box with write_file_chunk, and calls the verb; the user clicks Allow once on Adom Bridge's consent prompt. The verb is zip-slip hardened (256 MB / 512 MB caps), registers the libraries in Installed Libraries, never closes a running Altium (it reports restartNeeded), and returns a proof frame — the library as Altium actually opened it:

docs/webcontrol-altium-test.html is the acceptance harness (it loads the wiki's live webcontrol.js); docs/HANDOFF-COLBY.md is the contract for the page side.

The skillpack — ten skills, propagated like KiCad's and Fusion's

adom-wiki pkg install adom/altium-bridge delivers these into ~/.claude/skills/ on every container, and the dock's install step keeps them current:

Parts carry all three vendors

Every component the bridge authors gets Mouser Part # (Adom's preferred vendor), DigiKey Part #, and the exact LCSC Part # (so JLCPCB BOM/CPL round-trip), plus MPN / Manufacturer / Value / Package — looked up with one adom-parts-search call. Parameters land hidden; altium_set_visibility shows the one you want on the schematic.

Zero dialogs, by construction

Altium's scripting debugger breaks on any raised exception, so a raise is a modal. The bridge designs the class out rather than dismissing it: file reads probe with FileOpen before loading, every save is preceded by a transaction clear (a dangling PreProcess is what draws the save-a-copy warning), engine-halting identifiers are catalogued in the dev skill, and every verb that could draw one scans Altium's child windows afterwards and attaches a frame if it finds any. A dialog the user sees is logged as a defect, not handled.

Lineage

The bridge consolidates Barrett Land's summer-2026 Altium work — adom-desktop-altium-bridge, altium-part-importer, kicad10-to-altium — into one master repo: every verb ported onto the resident agent (his bridge forwarded one X2.EXE command per call), his three-path part workflow and KiCad-10 findings carried into the skillpack, his v10→v9 downgrader vendored under tools/. His pages stay up with pointers here.

Running / dependencies

Bridge provisions everything; nothing to install by hand.

• Python ≥ 3.11 (Bridge provisions it) — stdlib only.
• Altium Designer (host app; the altium-install skill drives a fresh install + trial sign-in).
• OS: Windows.

The bridge binds a Bridge-assigned port — never 0.0.0.0. Auto-updates via updateManifestUrl in bridge.json.

Developer docs ship as user-invocable:false skills in the package — altium-bridge-plan is the plan of record with every measured engine fact (the DelphiScript traps, the canvas-persistence rule for 3D bodies, the stale-agent reload bug, the UIPI lessons). Maintainers get them with the normal pkg install.