PCBA Studio for VS Code

Optional VS Code and Cursor UI for PCBA Studio, packaged as newmatik.pcba-studio for the VS Marketplace and Open VSX. The viewer and tracker work on their own; the whole-project consistency review also needs the Python pcba command on the extension host's PATH.

Features

Hardware/firmware review

Run PCBA Studio: Run Hardware/Firmware Review from the Command Palette or the action on an open .SchDoc. The extension executes the deterministic engine locally and publishes its findings to the Problems panel. The status bar shows the active finding count; the completion message also reports suppressed findings and skipped checks.

Settings:

pcbastudio.engine.executable: engine command, default pcba.
pcbastudio.engine.target: optional target from pcba-studio.toml.
pcbastudio.engine.baseline: optional baseline path relative to the workspace.

Altium schematic viewer

Open binary .SchDoc and .SchDot files without Altium. The custom editor provides component, pin, and net tables; a geometric heuristic netlist; an SVG preview; and grouped BOM CSV, Protel netlist, and versioned JSON exports. The viewer is useful for inspection, not an ERC or sign-off tool. Engine review findings always use the Python extractor, not this heuristic netlist.

Markdown project tracker

PCBA Studio: Initialize project tracking creates project/tracker/. Central registers hold open and closed actions, questions, and decisions; meeting notes are immutable narratives that reference their IDs. Six sidebar views, live lint diagnostics, quick fixes, and guided commands cover the normal workflow.

Every mutation holds a cross-process project lock and replaces files atomically. IDs are allocated as max+1 per prefix across the corpus, touched front matter gets a revision bump, and historical meeting notes are never rewritten. The agent contract is skills/pcba-tracker/SKILL.md at the repository root.

MCP server

dist/mcp-server.js is a zero-SDK stdio server for single-sheet and tracker operations. Use PCBA Studio: Set up MCP server for AI chat to register it and PCBA Studio: Test MCP server to check the handshake.

It is separate from the engine's pcba mcp server, which reviews whole projects.

Eleven schdoc_* tools read summaries, title blocks, components, pins, nets, BOMs, searches, netlists, and the JSON model. Parsed sheets are cached by path and modification time.
Thirteen tracker_* tools inspect, search, lint, format, initialize, and mutate tracker data. All mutation tools enforce the same locking and format invariants as the UI.

Development

Requirements: Node 20, 22, or 24.

npm ci
npm run build        # dist/extension.js, dist/webview.js, dist/mcp-server.js
npm test             # typecheck, bundle, Vitest
npm run package      # pcba-studio-<version>.vsix

Open this directory in VS Code and press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host. Schematic tests use the generated board under ../fixtures/synthetic/; real sheets belong only in the gitignored test/fixtures/local/ directory.

The Python and TypeScript record decoders share ../fixtures/conformance/schdoc-record-streams.json. Update the corpus and both implementations in the same change when record-stream behavior changes.

Releases

From the repository root, python tools/release.py runs both test suites, builds the Python wheel and sdist plus the VSIX, and verifies both MCP handshakes. The manual GitHub release workflow uploads those artifacts. scripts/publish.sh publishes the VSIX with publisher tokens; authenticated publisher web sessions can upload that same checked VSIX directly.

PCBA Studio

Newmatik GmbH