KiCad runs in the browser, built with help from Claude
KiCad now has a browser demo. KiCad is a tool for designing circuit boards, and the demo lets people open a sample project or bring their own project. Firefox works best, Chrome works well, and Safari only works at a basic level.
The work comes from Emergence Engineering, a Hungarian development shop, through an early version of PCBJam. PCBJam began as a hobby project by Viktor, the company’s CTO and a former electrical engineer, then became more product-focused in recent months. The hard part was showing KiCad’s circuit-board canvas on the web.
Trying to copy the old OpenGL drawing behavior in the browser led to many bugs, so writing WebGL code that worked with KiCad’s turned out to be faster. Claude helped implement the , with each step checked against the native desktop version of KiCad.
Key points
- KiCad can now be tried in a browser demo.
- People can open a sample project or bring their own project.
- Firefox works best, Chrome works well, and Safari support is still rough.
- Copying the old OpenGL behavior in the browser caused many bugs.
- Claude helped build the WebGL while the result was compared with desktop KiCad.