ProtoForge

An idea → showable hardware product pipeline, as an interactive Claude Code skill.

Example output — a PCBA assembly animation ProtoForge produced for an ESP32 GPS tracker.

ProtoForge takes an electronics idea through four phases — each with a hard exit criterion — by orchestrating KiCad, FreeCAD and Blender from Claude Code:

Phase	Tooling	Exit criterion
1. Schematic	KiCad (text-authored, labels-on-pins)	ERC-clean
2. PCB + autoroute	pcbnew + Freerouting + GND-pour finish	DRC 0/0/0 (--schematic-parity)
3. Enclosure	FreeCAD (MCP), mold-ready 2-part case fitted to the board	STEP + STL exported
4. Animation	KiCad colored GLB → Blender cinematic assembly	MP4 rendered

It runs as a guided wizard: it interviews you, proposes a plan, then executes phase-by-phase and stops for your approval at each phase boundary.

What you get

• skills/protoforge/SKILL.md — the skill itself (portable; no hard-coded paths)
• SETUP.md — full setup: prerequisites, MCP servers, config, install, verify
• config/protoforge.config.example — where you put your local tool paths
• mcp/claude_mcp_config.example.json — example Claude Code MCP server entries
• install.ps1 / install.sh — copy the skill into your ~/.claude/skills/

Quick start

1. Read SETUP.md and install the toolchain + MCP servers.
2. Copy config/protoforge.config.example → ~/.claude/protoforge.config and fill in your paths.
3. Run the installer (install.ps1 on Windows, install.sh on macOS/Linux) to drop the skill into ~/.claude/skills/protoforge/.
4. Open Claude Code and type /protoforge.

Heads-up

ProtoForge is a playbook, not a standalone app. It only works on top of the local toolchain in SETUP.md plus a Claude Code subscription/API. KiCad, FreeCAD, Blender and Freerouting are third-party software under their own (mostly GPL/LGPL) licenses — see NOTICE.md. The skill text in this repo is under LICENSE.