Use this when you need to LOOK at a kernelCAD model — render its script to deterministic PNG views for visual self-check (the visual half of the evaluate → render → inspect → fix loop), with NO studio or dev server required. Pass { code } (inline source) or { file } (a .kcad.ts path), exactly one. Renders the canonical engineering views (front, right, top, iso — pass { views } for a subset, e.g. ["iso"] for fastest iteration) plus an optional { pose: "<az>,<el>" } arbitrary camera angle (degrees; az=0,el=0 is front, +az rotates CCW around +Z, +el lifts the camera). NO STUDIO / DEV-SERVER REQUIRED: a prebuilt static player (dist/headless-player) is served from an ephemeral local port automatically; a running studio dev server is used as fallback, and { base_url } forces one. The only environment dependency is playwright chromium (npx playwright install chromium). Pass { focus } or { hide } (arrays of feature ids or assembly part names, mutually exclusive) to isolate parts — same semantics as `kernelcad render --focus/--hide`. PNGs are written to { out_dir } (default: a fresh temp session directory) and returned as absolute paths with per-view camera descriptions (kernelCAD is Z-up). Mechanism truth runs first, same protocol as `kernelcad render`: a broken mechanism still renders but every tile is watermarked MECHANISM BROKEN (KERNELCAD_RENDER_STRICT=1 refuses instead); read { mechanism, mechanism_failure_codes }. The probe runs full BREP interference sweeps and can dominate latency on large assemblies — pass { no_mechanism_check: true } for fast iteration (the preview then reports mechanism: "unverified"; ignored under strict mode). Returns { ok, images: [{ name, path, description }], out_dir, bounds, mechanism, render_source, render_ms, diagnostics }. PATHS ARE LOCAL to the machine running the MCP server — local stdio clients read them directly; hosted/remote clients should use open_in_studio instead.
