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.
MCP server for netlist parsing and circuit analysis
2026-11-15
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It reads Cadence, Altium, and KiCad design files directly on macOS, Linux, and Windows, with no Cadence or Altium installation and no EDA license required.
Supported Formats
Format
Input Files
Description
Cadence (OrCAD / CIS)
.DSN schematic
Reads the binary schematic directly, including each part's own Do Not Stuff state and the selectable CIS BOM design variants. A design saved in an older Capture format (Library stream version below 3) is listed as unsupported and refused with a message naming its version; re-save it in a newer Capture to read it
Altium Designer
.SchDoc
Altium schematic documents, discovered via .PrjPcb project files; sheets are joined through ports, sheet entries and buses under the project's net identifier scope, with selectable design variants (Not Fitted rows, alternate parts, and parameter overrides)
KiCad
.kicad_pro (or root .kicad_sch)
Reads a committed .net export, or else the schematics themselves (KiCad 6 to 10, no KiCad install needed), with kicad-cli as the last resort; then applies a selected design variant from the schematic's own instance blocks. See the KiCad schematic reader
Installing takes two steps: the universal-netlist binary, then the plugin for your agent. The plugin connects the MCP server to the agent, so there is no configuration to write.
No dependencies: a standalone binary, with no Node.js required
Auto-updates: the binary checks for updates on startup; universal-netlist update updates it on demand
Signed binaries: macOS binaries are notarized by Apple
It places the binary in the bin/ folder of ~/Library/Application Support/universal-netlist/ (macOS), ~/.local/share/universal-netlist/ (Linux) or %LOCALAPPDATA%\universal-netlist\ (Windows), and adds that folder to your PATH in both your shell's startup file and its login profile, so apps started outside a terminal, such as the Claude desktop app, find it too. Restart your agent afterwards. If you installed before the login-profile entry existed, run the installer again: it adds only what is missing.
The --sparse paths fetch only the plugin; Codex otherwise clones the whole repository, test fixtures included, which takes minutes. The plugin works in the Codex CLI and the Codex app.
Then ask the agent to review a schematic, trace a net, or check a design.
Other agents
Open Customize, choose Browse Marketplace, then Add Marketplace → Import from GitHub. Enter IntelligentElectron/universal-netlist and add the universal-netlist plugin.
The plugin carries a skill that teaches an agent those commands, their flags and exit codes, and the parse cache; the agent uses it only when the MCP server is not connected. Agents that read Agent Skills can install the skill alone through the GitHub CLI:
gh skill install IntelligentElectron/universal-netlist universal-netlist --agent github-copilot --scope user
--agent takes opencode, amp, goose and the other names gh skill install --help lists. See docs/cli.md for the command line itself.
Supported Platforms
Platform
Binary
macOS (Universal)
universal-netlist-darwin-universal
Linux (x64)
universal-netlist-linux-x64
Linux (ARM64)
universal-netlist-linux-arm64
Windows (x64)
universal-netlist-windows-x64.exe
Observability (OpenTelemetry)
The server can emit OpenTelemetrytraces, metrics, and logs for every tool call, which report which tools are used, how long they take, and what fails. Any OTLP-compatible backend receives them (an OpenTelemetry Collector, Jaeger, Tempo, Prometheus, Honeycomb, Datadog, or a managed cloud tracing service).
OpenTelemetry is disabled by default and is enabled and configured through the standard OTEL_* environment variables, with no code changes. Separately, the server keeps a local usage log on your disk.
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
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.
