Before, there was a mixture of different manufacturers for 0603/0402 resistors. We decided to standardize on Yageo (something stocked fairly well worldwide) and populate all the E96 values while we were at it.
I started by making a doc change in the README:
### Preferred manufacturers
- Yageo is the preferred manufacturer for standard thick-film 1% `0402` `0603`
etc. resistor series (`RES-0000`, `RES-0001`). All `E96` values are populated
for these series.
Then I ran the /implement command (from the above plugin), and Claude did all the work. It generated several Python scripts to generate the part entries. The resulting csv file looks good and works well in KiCad:
Generally KiCad has the advantage here because everything is text based. Great for LLMs. Amazing how well Claude works for this structured text although it is probably not trained for that. For coding it’s just plain brutal.
I have read that Claude code is supposed to work in a terminal. Not sure how this is should work. In VSCode, there is so much interactivity - you can point it to parts in the code, you can add reference, there is the history in the chat etc. On top there is code completion (which sometimes is jaw-dropping), inline chat (not so useful).
I also have a github copilot pro subscription ($10/month), it seems there’s nothing for free. But there’s so much fun with it that the $10 are well worth it.
However, I’m pleased with Claude Code and the doc-driven-development plugin workflow. For this particular task, I had no reason to be in an IDE. Give it a try and see what you think.
This is a little off-topic, but one of the problems I see with a lot of AI coding solutions is that you end up poking around down in the weeds (continually prompting and prodding it to do what is needed), instead of clearly specifying at a high level what is needed, and thoroughly planning the approach. Part of this is no doubt personal preference.
