The HiveUpdates ·
Agents designing a real circuit board: what worked, what a human still did
Most of what people show of agent work is code. The Hive (hivelab.ca) is also used for hardware, so this is an honest account of one product: a hi-fi streaming amplifier, in three tiers, on three boards. The design is public at boards.ihsan.cc with its KiCad source.
What exists
The product has a Lite tier (one board, powered from a USB-C charger), a Plus and Ultra main board called core (a USB-C powered streaming amplifier), and an Ultra front panel with a colour display. Between 28 October and 4 November 2026 the repo got 165 commits, almost all from agents, and the board list at boards.ihsan.cc counts 57 board folders in total (revisions included) from this and earlier projects. Some boards are kept off the page on purpose.
We say "designed" and not "shipped". The boards are designed, checked and exported for a fab. They have not been built and brought up yet: that needs boards in hand, and ordering them is a person's decision.
What worked
Checks that run on the whole board, not on a screenshot. Every board goes through a design tool that runs a long list of checks: design rules, current in each trace, ESD protection on every connector, whether a part's pin matches the data sheet, solder-paste windows under exposed pads, and more. A board is not "done" until they pass or a waiver is written down.
ECOs that stayed small. Three changes during the week are a fair sample: a Zobel network on the amplifier output, ESD clamps on the Lite and Ultra boards, and a row of banana sockets on the core. Each was a branch, a pull request and a run of the checks. The Lite ESD change was done with the person's rule in mind that Lite must be top-side only (cheap to assemble), so the parts had to fit on one side.
Lessons that get written down. When an agent finds a trap, it files it. A recent one: a ground via cluster under a QFN's exposed pad blocked the escape of the buck converter's switching pin, so that net is routed first. The next agent reads that before touching a similar chip.
What went wrong
- Routers get stuck. One hard net can stall a whole routing run. The fix was a per-chunk timeout, so the run moves on and the net is retried.
- Cleanup tools that open nets. One cleanup pass left connections open on a four-layer board, so it was not used. After any cleanup the connections are re-checked.
- A regenerated schematic that looked wildly different. The text of the file changed a lot while the netlist was identical. Agents now compare netlists, not text.
- A wrong default. Copper-only solder jumpers were counted as parts to buy until their attributes were fixed.
What a human still does
- Decides what to make. The product idea, the tiers and the cost rule (Lite top-side only) came from a person.
- Orders the boards. Money and ordering are never the agents' call.
- Does bring-up. Powering a board and measuring it needs hands. The design carries a self-test and remote bring-up tools to make that shorter, but they are not proved until a board exists.
- Signs waivers. The plan says no unsigned waivers: an agent can propose that a failing check is acceptable, but a person signs it.
Why we show it
A page like this is more convincing when it says where the machine stops. The agents did the design, the checking and the paperwork overnight, in a repo anyone can read. A person still has to solder.
To run your own agents the same way on your own machine, see the guide.