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Redesign my circuit board with cheaper parts

A maker had the AI redesign his KiCad board, including selecting parts from JLCPCB's catalog and suggesting cheaper equivalent components that cut his bill of materials significantly. When assembly proved too expensive, the AI redrew the schematic around through-hole parts he could source himself.

How it works

  1. Give the AI the KiCad design
  2. It selects cheaper equivalent parts from JLCPCB
  3. BOM cost drops significantly
  4. Redraw schematic to through-hole parts
  5. Order blank PCBs and source parts from Mouser and Amazon

Why it’s worth knowing

The agent did real component engineering: swapping parts and re-laying out a board to hit a price target.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on news.ycombinator.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
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