The open workbench for electronics. Design schematics, simulate circuits with real SPICE, and watch them come alive — LEDs glow, motors spin, buttons click — all in one browser tab.
▶ Open the bench · Try the interactive playground · Interchange format · Architecture
Live mode: press the button, drag the pot, flip the switch — every interaction re-runs real ngspice (WebAssembly) and the circuit reacts.
Electronics tooling is powerful but fragmented: schematic capture in one desktop app, simulation in another, firmware in a third — with proprietary formats in between. OpenBench orchestrates the best open engines behind one versioned interchange format, in the browser:
| Engine | What it does here | |
|---|---|---|
| 🎨 | Schematic editor (bespoke) | Figma-feel canvas: place parts, draw nets, undo/redo, autosave |
| ⚡ | ngspice (WebAssembly) | Real SPICE transient analysis, locally in your tab — no server, no queue |
| 🔀 | KiCad format | Import/export .kicad_sch — your designs stay portable |
| 🔧 | PlatformIO | Firmware builds for ESP32, flash-to-virtual-MCU (QEMU) |
| 🤖 | MCP | Every engine wrapped as an MCP server — AI agents use the same contracts you do |
No account. No install. Everything is Apache-2.0 (patent grant included).
Enter Live and the schematic becomes a running device: LED brightness follows the Shockley-modeled current, the motor's rotor spins proportional to voltage, buzzers ripple, lamps glow. Push buttons are momentary, switches latch, potentiometers and photoresistors get drag sliders — each interaction updates the IR document and re-runs the simulation in ~real time. Scrub the timeline like a video.
Pan/zoom/snap canvas, marquee selection, pin-to-pin wire drawing that creates and merges IR nets, keyboard-first (Del, R, ⌘Z/⇧⌘Z), parameter inspector, and debounced autosave to your browser. Built on Meta's Astryx design system.
The RC low-pass demo drives a PULSE source through ngspice-WASM and plots genuine exponential charge/discharge — with multi-signal traces, engineering-notation axes, hover readouts, and the full SPICE deck one tab away.
Resistor, capacitor, LED, RGB LED, diode, NPN transistor, potentiometer, pushbutton, switch, DC motor, buzzer, lamp, LDR, DC & PULSE sources, ground, ESP32 DevKit — every part is a validated IR document with a real SPICE model (interactive parts use safe derived-parameter expressions).
Use it: open openbench-eta.vercel.app, pick a template (RC low-pass, ESP32 blink, or the interactive playground), and hit Live.
Run it locally:
git clone https://github.com/shuvamk/openbench.git
cd openbench
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:3000
npm test # 525 testsEngines never talk to each other — every hand-off is a JSON document in the OpenBench IR (versioned, provenance-stamped, zod-validated):
flowchart LR
A["🎨 Schematic<br/>(editor / KiCad import)"] -->|schematic IR| B["netlist-compiler"]
B -->|netlist IR| C["⚡ mcp-sim-ngspice<br/>(WASM in-browser)"]
C -->|simulationRun IR<br/>waveform-v1| D["📈 Waveforms +<br/>🔴 Live mode physics"]
A -->|schematic IR| E["🔀 mcp-kicad<br/>.kicad_sch export"]
F["🔧 mcp-firmware-platformio"] -->|firmwareTarget IR| G["ESP32 build →<br/>virtual flash (QEMU)"]
| Package | Role |
|---|---|
packages/ir-schema |
The canonical IR: schemas, validation, versioning |
packages/registry |
Curated component library (validated IR documents) |
packages/netlist-compiler |
Schematic → SPICE-ready netlist (safe expression evaluator for interactive parts) |
packages/mcp-kicad |
KiCad adapter + MCP server (lossless round-trip via metadata) |
packages/mcp-sim-ngspice |
ngspice adapter + MCP server (WASM & mock backends) |
packages/mcp-firmware-platformio |
PlatformIO adapter + MCP server (ESP32, QEMU machine configs) |
apps/web |
The browser app (Next.js + Astryx) |
Engine-by-engine status, capabilities, and documented lossy fields: .context/engine-status.md.
OpenBench is built autonomously by AI agents coordinating through GitHub issues — a planner decomposes features into test-shaped issues, TDD implementers work them red→green (a pre-tool hook mechanically blocks source edits without a prior failing test), an adversarial reviewer gates every merge, and every merge to main deploys to production with an automatic health probe + revert path. Humans are welcome in the exact same pipeline — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
The repo's "brain" lives in .context/: current architecture, an append-only decision log (ADRs), the interchange format, engine status, and a deploy log. Read it before contributing — CI enforces that it stays fresh.
- ✅ Phase 0 — autonomous agentic pipeline (issues → TDD → review gate → deploy)
- ✅ Phase 1 — vertical slice: editor → IR → ngspice-WASM → waveforms; KiCad round-trip; PlatformIO adapter; dashboard
- ✅ Phase 1.5 — Live mode, 17-part library, undo/redo, KiCad UI, MCP servers, interactive playground
- 🔜 Firmware-in-the-loop: ESP32 firmware driving GPIO events into the live circuit (QEMU)
- 🔜 Operating-point & AC analyses; current probes; oscilloscope-style triggers
- 🔜 Community component registry (curator-gated submissions)
- 🗓 Phase 2 — real-time multiplayer (CRDT), PCB layout, more MCU families
TypeScript strict everywhere, vitest, npm workspaces. The TDD contract, label taxonomy, and agent roles are documented in CLAUDE.md and .context/agent-roles.md.
npm test # full suite
npm run test -w packages/ir-schema # one package
npm run validate:ir # IR spec-syncApache-2.0 — the patent grant matters for hardware.