KiCad Board Audit
Public Made by Adomby adom
Agent skill for auditing any KiCad board before fab: real ERC/DRC, pad-level netlist extraction from the .kicad_pcb, and a checklist for the bugs ERC can't see — floating mandatory pins, supply pins on GND, wrong straps, wrong-variant feedback dividers, missing pull-ups, impedance class misassignment — verified against datasheets and reported by severity.
KiCad Board Audit
An agent skill that turns "review this board for errors" into a repeatable, verified audit of any KiCad project, schematic and layout, before you spend money on fabrication.
What it does
- Runs the real checkers:
kicad-cliERC + DRC (locally or through the Adom desktop KiCad bridge), and reads the project's silenced-rule config so a "clean" pass can't hide muted checks. - Extracts the pad-level netlist from the
.kicad_pcb(the synced ground truth) with the bundledassets/kicad_netlist.py: components, per-net pin lists, unconnected pads, routed lengths, via counts. Handles KiCad 7–10 format differences. - Walks an electrical checklist for the bugs ERC is structurally blind to: floating mandatory pins (VCAP-type), supply pins tied to GND, strap/boot-pin encodings, regulator dividers computed with the wrong variant's VFB, missing open-drain pull-ups, crystal load-cap math, connector shields, reset timing.
- Audits the layout from the file: net-class impedance assignment (and nets that silently fall into Default), diff-pair skew, via-vs-constraint conflicts, keepout allow-flags, stale zones, unrouted items.
- Verifies every suspicion against a primary source (datasheet, vendor hardware-design checklist, EVB schematic) before reporting it, then delivers a severity-ranked report (Critical / High / Medium / Low), each finding with refs, pins, evidence, and a concrete fix, plus a verified-correct section so good design doesn't get re-flagged next review.
Born from a real audit of a 7-port automotive Ethernet switch board where ERC reported 0/0 while the MCU's VCAP pins floated and four switch supply pins sat on GND. The checklist is generic: it applies to any board with ICs on it.
Install
adom-wiki pkg install adom/kicad-board-audit
The install links the skill into ~/.claude/skills/ so any agent session can
invoke it. Then just ask: "audit this board: path/to/project.kicad_pro".
# KiCad Board Audit
An agent skill that turns "review this board for errors" into a repeatable,
verified audit of any KiCad project, schematic and layout, before you spend
money on fabrication.
## What it does
1. **Runs the real checkers**: `kicad-cli` ERC + DRC (locally or through the
Adom desktop KiCad bridge), and reads the project's silenced-rule config so
a "clean" pass can't hide muted checks.
2. **Extracts the pad-level netlist** from the `.kicad_pcb` (the synced ground
truth) with the bundled `assets/kicad_netlist.py`: components, per-net pin
lists, unconnected pads, routed lengths, via counts. Handles KiCad 7–10
format differences.
3. **Walks an electrical checklist** for the bugs ERC is structurally blind to:
floating mandatory pins (VCAP-type), supply pins tied to GND, strap/boot-pin
encodings, regulator dividers computed with the wrong variant's VFB, missing
open-drain pull-ups, crystal load-cap math, connector shields, reset timing.
4. **Audits the layout from the file**: net-class impedance assignment (and
nets that silently fall into Default), diff-pair skew, via-vs-constraint
conflicts, keepout allow-flags, stale zones, unrouted items.
5. **Verifies every suspicion against a primary source** (datasheet, vendor
hardware-design checklist, EVB schematic) before reporting it, then delivers
a severity-ranked report (Critical / High / Medium / Low), each finding
with refs, pins, evidence, and a concrete fix, plus a verified-correct
section so good design doesn't get re-flagged next review.
Born from a real audit of a 7-port automotive Ethernet switch board where ERC
reported 0/0 while the MCU's VCAP pins floated and four switch supply pins sat
on GND. The checklist is generic: it applies to any board with ICs on it.
## Install
```bash
adom-wiki pkg install adom/kicad-board-audit
```
The install links the skill into `~/.claude/skills/` so any agent session can
invoke it. Then just ask: *"audit this board: path/to/project.kicad_pro"*.