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imperator-clawdius/hey-pcb

v0.1.0MIT

Agent-driven PCB engineering: design real KiCad boards from a text brief, instant fabrication quotes, and production tracking through HeyPCB's first-party MCP server. Spend-aware: money-spending tools are gated behind Hermes approvals with declared per-tool costs and a per-chat budget. Bundles the hey-pcb workflow skill (design -> local review -> quote -> approval gate -> order).

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hermes-hey-pcb

Agent-driven PCB engineering for Hermes Agent: a portable Agent Plugins v1 package that connects Hermes to HeyPCB's first-party MCP server (@heypcb/mcp), with spend-aware gating and a workflow skill bundled.

hermes plugins install imperator-clawdius/hermes-hey-pcb
hermes plugins enable hey-pcb

What it gives your agent

  • Design from a brief. build_board hands a text spec to HeyPCB's design agent, which produces a real KiCad project — parts, placement, routing, ground pours, DRC/ERC.
  • Reads stay free. Board state, schematics, netlists, images, part search, history and exports are zero-cost design tools (rate-limited per account).
  • Spend is gated. The manifest declares the server untrusted with per-tool costs and a per-chat spend_limit, so Hermes names the cost and asks before any call that can spend.
  • Local source of truth. export (gerbers / kicad / bom / cpl / step) saves real files.

The workflow skill

hey-pcb:hey-pcb encodes the pipeline: brief -> design -> wait_for_turn polling -> local review of Inky's self-grade -> export -> estimate -> approval gate. It also encodes the honest limits: agent-generated DRC/ERC-clean boards are not automatically production-qualified.

Setup

  1. Get an API key at heypcb.ai (Settings -> API).
  2. Put it where Hermes reads profile secrets: HEYPCB_API_KEY in your profile .env (or export it in the shell that runs Hermes).
  3. Install and enable this plugin. The key is forwarded to the MCP server as an environment variable — it is never stored in plugin files.

Disclosures (rule 13)

  • Network: the MCP server talks to api.heypcb.ai; npx fetches the pinned @heypcb/mcp@0.1.8 package from npm on first launch.
  • No local secrets: the key lives in Hermes's environment, not in this repo.
  • Costs: design tools are free per HeyPCB's published limits; engine runs and Inky turns are billed to the HeyPCB account at its plan rate. Hermes shows the cost before each call.

License

MIT. Not affiliated with HeyPCB — their service, their API.