Universal Netlist MCP Server

The Universal Netlist MCP Server gives AI agents the tools to understand and analyze your electrical schematics, for powerful and comprehensive design reviews through natural conversations.

It is compatible with Cadence, Altium, and KiCad, with plans to integrate more EDAs in the future. It reads your design files directly on macOS, Linux, and Windows, with no Cadence or Altium installation and no EDA license required.

Supported Formats

Related MCP server: KiCad MCP Server

Native Install (Recommended)

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IntelligentElectron/universal-netlist/main/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IntelligentElectron/universal-netlist/main/install.ps1 | iex

Why use the native installer:

• No dependencies — standalone binary, no Node.js required

• Auto-updates — checks for updates on startup

• Signed binaries — macOS binaries are notarized by Apple

The installer places the binary in the bin/ folder of:

Update

The server checks for updates on startup. To update manually:

universal-netlist update

Alternative: Install via npm

For developers who prefer npm:

npm install -g @intelligentelectron/universal-netlist

Or use with npx (no installation required):

npx @intelligentelectron/universal-netlist help

Requires Node.js 20+.

To update:

npm update -g @intelligentelectron/universal-netlist

Connect the MCP with your favorite AI tool

After installing the MCP with one of the methods above, you can connect it to your AI agent of choice.

Claude Code and the Claude desktop app

Install the Claude Code CLI, then run:

claude mcp add --scope user universal-netlist -- universal-netlist

Local sessions in the Code tab of the Claude desktop app use the MCP servers Claude Code registers, so the server is available there too.

OpenAI Codex

Install OpenAI Codex, then run:

codex mcp add universal-netlist -- universal-netlist

Supported Platforms

Observability (OpenTelemetry)

The server can emit OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs for every tool call, so you can integrate your own OTel service and see which tools are used, how long they take, and what fails. It is vendor-neutral and works with any OTLP-compatible backend (an OpenTelemetry Collector, Jaeger, Tempo, Prometheus, Honeycomb, Datadog, a managed cloud tracing service, etc.).

OpenTelemetry is disabled by default with zero overhead, and is enabled and configured entirely through the standard OTEL_* environment variables — no code changes. Separately, the server keeps a local usage log on your disk.

See Observability (OpenTelemetry) for setup, configuration, and the full list of emitted spans, metrics, and logs.

Documentation

See docs/ for API documentation and response schemas, docs/cli.md for the binary's command line, and docs/password-protected-designs.md for OrCAD designs saved with a password.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines.

Privacy Policy

The server runs on your machine and sends the author nothing; it keeps a local usage log on your disk. The full policy is PRIVACY.md.

About

Created by Valentino Zegna

This project is hosted on GitHub under the IntelligentElectron organization.

Universal Netlist MCP Server and the universal netlist open standard are original works by Valentino Zegna.

Acknowledgments

The Cadence DSN binary parser is a TypeScript port of OpenOrCadParser by Dominik Wernberger. Their work reverse-engineering the OrCAD binary format made direct schematic parsing possible.

License

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE