NodeBound

A headless, AI-native EDA engine in the spirit of Flux.ai — the hard part (constraint engine, routing, DRC, format import/export) without any UI. Everything runs fully headless (CLI/CI) and is tested with golden files and property tests. The reactive engine is IR-first: importers/exporters are IR↔format codecs, which makes multi-format output cheap.

Phase 2 (current)

• Board IR in ir: footprints (pads with shape/size/layers/net), tracks, vias, zones, stackup (copper layers, thickness), design rules (clearance, min track width, min via annular ring).
• DRC engine in engine, run headless over the board IR: nodebound drc board.kicad_pcb prints a JSON report (violation type, location, nets) and exits nonzero on violations; --check is silent (exit 0/1) for CI. Checks: pad–pad / track–track / track–pad / via clearance (different nets), unconnected nets, track width below minimum, via annular ring below minimum, silkscreen over pads.
• KiCad importer upgrades: footprints/pads/tracks/vias/zones/stackup parse into the board IR; the P1 S-expression round-trip is unchanged and still byte-stable.
• SPICE netlist export: nodebound export-netlist board.kicad_pcb --out circuit.cir emits a ngspice-runnable netlist from board connectivity (each two-terminal footprint stubbed as a resistor, ground-like nets map to node 0); CI runs ngspice -b on it.
• IPC-2581 export (altium crate): the open-standard XML fallback for Altium interop — nodebound export <in> --out out.xml --format ipc2581. Full .PcbDoc binary writing stays out of scope.
• Phase 1 capabilities remain: KiCad S-expression round-trip (parse → IR → write, byte-identical from the second write on), CLI import/export.

Build & test

Requires Rust (stable; see rust-toolchain).

cargo build
cargo test --all
cargo clippy --all -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --check

CLI:

cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- import fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- export fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb --out out.kicad_pcb --format kicad
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- export fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb --out out.xml --format ipc2581
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- drc fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb          # JSON report
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- drc fixtures/bad_board.kicad_pcb       # nonzero exit on violations
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- drc --check fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb  # silent CI mode (0/1)
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- export-netlist fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb --out circuit.cir
ngspice -b circuit.cir

# Controlled impedance -> KiCad net classes (project file):
# 50 ohm on the default FR-4 stackup stamps Power's track width;
# 90 ohm differential stamps USB's diff-pair width + gap.
cargo run -p nodebound-cli -- export-project fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb \
  --out out.kicad_pro --set Power=50 --set-diff USB=90
python3 scripts/referee/proj_load_check.py out.kicad_pcb ...  # pcbnew referee (needs an adjacent board)

# Web client (read-only by default): http://127.0.0.1:2581
cargo run -p nodebound-server --bin nodebound-web-server
# POST /rpc speaks the same JSON-RPC 2.0 envelope as the MCP server.

# Container release artifact (headless, no Rust toolchain needed):
docker build -t nodebound .
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/data" nodebound drc /data/fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb
scripts/container_smoke.sh   # full command surface in one piped script

Layout

Crate	Purpose
crates/ir	S-expression tree + semantic netlist/board IR
crates/kicad	KiCad 7/8 S-expression parser, writer, board extraction
crates/engine	Board loading, DRC engine, SPICE netlist export
crates/server	Headless JSON-RPC server skeleton
crates/cli	The nodebound binary
crates/altium	IPC-2581 (XML) exporter — open Altium fallback
fixtures/	Hand-written golden KiCad fixtures

The canonical formatting of the golden fixture is checked against fixtures/golden_canonical.kicad_pcb; regenerate with:

cargo run -p nodebound-kicad --example gen_canonical -- fixtures/golden.kicad_pcb \
  > fixtures/golden_canonical.kicad_pcb

Testing & open-source tooling policy

Headless, open-source-first: we compose mature open-source tools as referees in CI instead of reimplementing their logic.

• KiCad pcbnew/kicad-cli — independent referee: kicad_load_check.py loads our exports with KiCad's own parser, and kicad-cli pcb drc runs KiCad's DRC on our exported golden board in the CI referee job.
• ngspice — circuit simulation; netlists are extracted from the IR (nodebound export-netlist) and run in batch mode (ngspice -b) in CI.
• pcb-rnd / py-altium — read-only references and cross-checks for format work.
• LVS-style electrical checks compare the netlist extracted from layout against the schematic netlist.

Everything runs headless (no GUI) and deterministically (seeded RNG only).

Roadmap

See flux-clone-plan.md (P2 board semantics + DRC, P3 autorouter, P4 assistant layer, P5 UI).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.