mixelpixx/Konnect

PCB design has always been one of those domains where AI assistance looked plausible in demos and fell apart in practice. The call chain was the problem: earlier attempts at wiring Claude into KiCAD involved TypeScript dispatching to Python subprocesses, which talked to SWIG-generated C++ proxy objects, which finally touched the board. Four serialization boundaries, subprocess lifecycle fragility, stdout parsing that had to filter out KiCAD's own warning noise, and chunked JSON reassembly. Konnect collapses all of that into a single Rust binary that calls functions directly.

The architectural decision that matters most here is the choice of backend. KiCAD is actively deprecating its SWIG Python bindings — the predecessor project's PCB backend — in favor of an IPC API based on protobuf over NNG. Konnect uses that IPC API, which means board edits integrate with KiCAD's own undo/redo stack rather than working around it. The predecessor had documented operational problems with SWIG: a zone-fill call that could segfault the backend, proxy-object comparison bugs, a fallback path that could silently swap backends mid-session. Those aren't fixed; they're gone.

Schematic editing takes a different path entirely — direct manipulation of .kicad_sch S-expression files with atomic writes (write, fsync, rename), UUID preservation, and round-trip tests. No KiCAD process required for schematic work, which matters for headless or offline workflows.

The context economy argument is worth taking seriously. Exposing all 204 tools to an LLM at once costs roughly 23K tokens per listing. Konnect's router starts with a small kit around 2K tokens and lets the model pull in toolsets on demand. That's not just a performance optimization — it's a recognition that context window pressure is a real constraint in long design sessions, and that the tool layer should manage it rather than leaving it to the user.

The binary weighs 20–25 MB installed, around 9 MB as a download. No Node.js, no Python, no pip packages, no wxPython, no SWIG bindings to version-match. That dependency surface reduction is probably the most immediately practical improvement for anyone who has tried to maintain a working install of the predecessor across KiCAD updates.

Windows is the most-tested platform. macOS works from release binaries or a source build but the schematic viewer hasn't had equivalent mileage. Linux compiles and passes CI tests but hasn't had per-platform QA. The beta label is honest.

Licensing is AGPL-3.0 with a commercial option. Hobbyists and open-source projects use it freely. Businesses that build on it — including network-served software — must open-source under the same terms or negotiate a commercial license. That's a deliberate choice to keep the tool accessible to the people most likely to stress-test it while protecting the commercial surface.