BoardReadyOps
BoardReadyOps is a release-readiness gate for KiCad hardware repositories. It answers one practical question before a tag, pull request, or manufacturing handoff: is this board ready to fabricate, and what evidence supports that decision?
It runs design checks, BOM risk checks, pinmap validation, manufacturing preflight, vendor-profile checks, release evidence validation, and CI gates. It is intentionally not a general-purpose KiCad artifact generator. Pair it with KiBot, kicad-cli, or an existing fabrication pipeline to produce Gerbers, drill files, BOMs, CPL/position files, drawings, and PDFs; then let BoardReadyOps validate the release evidence, vendor expectations, suppressions, and gate outcome.
Start here
- New to the project? Follow the Quickstart and Installation guides.
- Adding BoardReadyOps to CI? Use the GitHub Action or the CLI.
- Deciding what should block a release? Review Configuration, Rules, Reports, and Agent Planning Output.
- Preparing a manufacturer handoff? Read Vendor Profiles, Release Evidence, and Hardware SBOM.
Core workflows
1. Validate a board before release
Run BoardReadyOps against a KiCad workspace to collect findings across schematic, PCB, BOM, pinmap, manufacturing outputs, and release metadata. The result is a normalized pass/fail decision with actionable findings.
2. Verify manufacturing evidence
Use generated Gerbers, drill files, BOMs, CPL/position files, reports, and manifests as release evidence. BoardReadyOps checks whether expected outputs exist, are fresh, and satisfy configured vendor requirements.
3. Gate pull requests and tags
The GitHub Action can annotate pull requests, upload SARIF, publish reports, and enforce severity thresholds. Teams can tune what fails a build while keeping suppressions and waivers auditable.
4. Keep hardware and firmware aligned
Pinmap and firmware-facing checks help catch board/software mismatches before a release. This is especially useful when schematic net names, BOM variants, and firmware constants change independently.
Where to go next
| Goal | Page |
|---|---|
| Install and run locally | Installation |
| Add CI enforcement | GitHub Action |
| Give agents deterministic remediation steps | Agent Planning Output |
| Understand rule coverage | Rules |
| Configure vendor expectations | Vendor Profiles |
| Generate auditable release packages | Release Evidence |
| Compare with KiBot | KiBot Integration |
| Extend with custom rules | Plugin SDK |
Release-readiness, not just checks
A good hardware release is not only a clean DRC/ERC run. It also needs complete fabrication outputs, BOM evidence, variant consistency, documented suppressions, repeatable CI, and a clear decision record. BoardReadyOps treats those items as evidence for a manufacturing decision instead of loose files in a build directory.