Welcome to Konnect Discussions!

[mixelpixx]

Welcome!

So I finally released it. I have had very few people look at the code, or even try it out. I am releasing it now since I cant code in a cave forever. Please test it, let me know what you run into. If you get an error, or something is broken, remember to be as detailed as possible. Also if you are a contributor, I want to hear from you. What is your setup these days? Everyone is using AI, so what are you using?

This all gets built by me using Claude Code as my IDE. I have built custom tools that give any LLM I am using 'real time' data. It can pull datasheets, specs, parts lists, or even an entire repo. I do have some education, EE / CS from (Purdue), so having some domain knowledge makes using an AI to assistant building this a dream. I am primarily a Claude user. I am trying to train a smaller LLM, a Qwen or Nemotron to be an expert at KiCAD and PCB / Circuit design in general. This is so people can hopefully host on premise smaller models capable of doing this work. But that takes $.

So there, a little about me, not ai generated.

Also contributors. I want people to contribute, but I can hear the AGPL license complaints already. If you want to contribute, and you dont expect anything in return, awesome. If it bothers you that someone might benefit, make money off of your work -- I hear you. I am looking to remedy that, but it would require getting in touch with me. I am open to working with people to protect the work done on this. KiCAD MCP Server took off, organically, faster and more seriously than I could have imagined. I never set out to build something to be profitable, I truly just wanted to make it easier to have an idea and get it built faster - lets democratize stem, and engineering. I have heard from MI F1 teams here in the US that are using it, 2 Universities in the US have asked if they could try to incorporate it into their EE course work.

A few people took the open license of KiCAD MCP Server and ran with it, there are companies charging $50.00 a seat per month using the software the community built. Im ok with the work being used as a tool, to help. Being used as the product by someone kinda rubs me the wrong way. So thats kinda how we ended up here. The old project - 'Kicad MCP Server' will continue to be updated and probably even get its own rebuild here soon.

I hope everyone is well, life is being kind to you. If not, I hope whatever is bugging you fucks off.

Chris / Mixelpixx

[scorp508]

Very cool! When I popped onto the KiCAD MCP repo today to see what was new I saw the banner for Konnect. At first I was sad thinking 'oh no... the mcp is dead' then after reading it I see this is just the next generation. You have no idea how much your MCP has helped me with side projects. Thank you! Looking forward to trying this.

[mixelpixx]

Both versions live on. Im glad this helps to get things done. As I move some of my tools to rust / c++ I will keep the older version alive if possible. With all of the possible pathways for supply chain attacks, I want to reduce my attack surface by reducing dependencies. I think a lot of MCP servers will / or are doing the same, at least for projects that cant be easily recreated with an LLM. Im just lucky I have users, and that this project found its footing.

[Myseka]

Thanks for doing this! Is there a 'good' or specific JLCPCB DB that we should be using?

[mixelpixx]

@Myseka Late answer, but for the record since others land here: use download_jlcpcb_database — it fetches the maintained FTS5 SQLite build of the JLCPCB catalog (the same feed the kicad-jlcpcb-tools project publishes) and stores it locally; every search/lookup tool then runs against that file offline. No manual choice of database needed, and get_jlcpcb_database_stats tells you what you have and how stale it is.