open_projectLABSCO SUMMARY
You can name a project the way you think about it, not by file path.
Because the server discovers projects from the search paths you configure, "check my Arduino shield for violations" resolves without a .kicad_pro path, and DRC results are kept over time so progress on a violation list is visible rather than re-counted by hand.
What it is
A server that reads your KiCad projects and answers questions about them: project discovery, design rule checks, netlists, bills of materials, board thumbnails and circuit-pattern recognition.
What you get
- run_drc_check — design rule checking through the KiCad CLI, with history so you can compare against last week's run
- analyze_bom and export_bom_csv — analyse the components in a project and export a bill of materials
- open_project — launch KiCad on a specific project
- Netlist extraction from a schematic, so you can ask what a given component connects to
- Circuit pattern recognition that names the blocks in your schematic — which power-supply topologies you used, for example
- PCB thumbnails and component-density analysis
- Read-only resources under kicad://, including kicad://projects and kicad://drc/project_path
Requirements
KiCad 9.0 or higher, Python 3.10 or higher, and uv 0.8.0 or higher. Set KICAD_SEARCH_PATHS in a .env file to the directories holding your projects; use absolute paths, since the working directory of a client-launched server is undefined.
Setup effort
Build from source — git clone https://github.com/lamaalrajih/kicad-mcp.git
USE CASES
01
Seeing whether last week's DRC fixes helped
Run the check and compare against the stored history rather than re-reading two reports side by side.
02
Getting a parts list out of a design
Analyse the components, then export the bill of materials as CSV for whoever is ordering.
03
Understanding a schematic you did not draw
Ask which circuit patterns it contains — regulators, amplifiers — and get named blocks instead of a net soup.
04
Checking one component's connections
Extract the netlist and ask what a specific reference designator ties to.
4 tools
Listed in project docs. Your client may show a different list.
run_drc_checkanalyze_bomexport_bom_csvBEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
4 tools named in the project's documentation.
Requires
- KiCad 9.0 or later
- Python 3.10 or later
- uv 0.8.0 or later
- make
Where it runs
The documented client runs the server on your machine.
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
git clone https://github.com/lamaalrajih/kicad-mcp.git
cd kicad-mcp
make install
cp .env.example .envEdit .env and set KICAD_SEARCH_PATHS to the folders that hold your KiCad projects, comma-separated, as absolute paths
MCP Clients
Claude Desktop
CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"kicad": {
"command": "<YOUR_PATH_TO_PROJECT>/kicad-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
"args": [
"<YOUR_PATH_TO_PROJECT>/kicad-mcp/main.py"
]
}
}
}<YOUR_PATH_TO_PROJECT>/kicad-mcp is the full path to the kicad-mcp folder you cloned. Make install creates the .venv folder this block points at.
