About Copperhead

Copperhead is open-source AI for designing electronic hardware. It works directly with native KiCad files, from choosing components and drawing schematics to PCB layout, routing and generating manufacturing files. Along the way, it checks its work using ERC, DRC and simulation to catch problems before a board gets manufactured.

We want building hardware to be as fast as building software.

How it started

Copperhead grew out of Open Telegraph, a pocket-sized ESP32-S3 Morse key built with Claude's help. The build story documents the process.

Claude was good at reasoning about circuits, but turning that reasoning into a board a manufacturer could actually build still required a lot of manual work. Copperhead started as an attempt to close that gap.

Today, Copperhead is built by Animesh Chouhan and a small team of engineers and open-source contributors in Bengaluru, India.

Open source

Copperhead is open source because we believe engineers should be able to inspect, modify and extend the tools they depend on.

Our Show HN launch reached the Hacker News front page in September 2026.

We're also extending Copperhead beyond PCB design into simulation, verification and domain-specific engineering workflows through Fang.

The goal is to make it possible to go from an idea to verified, manufacturing-ready hardware with far fewer manual steps.

Get in touch

If you're designing a PCB, exploring AI for your hardware team or interested in contributing, we'd love to hear from you.

Tell us what you're building.