Manufacturing Export Workflow

KiCad Studio separates executable quality gate actions from documentation links. Use Run gate from the Quality Gates view to execute schematic, connectivity, placement, PCB transfer, or manufacturing checks. Use Open docs to inspect this workflow reference without starting a gate run.

The manufacturing export gate expects the active KiCad project to be selected, then validates the project state before release packaging. DRC and ERC findings remain real project diagnostics: the extension reports them as gate evidence and does not suppress or reinterpret board or schematic rule violations.

When live KiCad IPC is unavailable, read-only file-backed capabilities can still surface diagnostics, BOM, netlist, and export-readiness evidence. Write or apply actions remain disabled until the MCP server advertises the required live/write capability.

Prepare Manufacturing Release

The KiCad Studio: Prepare Manufacturing Release wizard turns the separate export and quality-gate actions into one auditable, evidence-backed release bundle.

1. Pick a variant (or the default), then choose Create release bundle or Preview (dry run). Dry-run reports the planned output folder, KiCad CLI version, source commit, and quality-gate status without exporting or writing any files.
2. Blocking quality gates (FAIL/BLOCKED) stop the release before any artifacts are produced.
3. The output folder is validated through the central guarded-operation layer, so it cannot escape the workspace (no .. traversal or symlink escape).
4. A successful release writes the manufacturing artifacts plus two evidence files:
   • release-manifest.json — schema-versioned record of the KiCad Studio extension version, KiCad CLI version and capability snapshot, MCP server version (when connected), git commit/branch/tag and dirty state, project files, per-artifact SHA-256 hashes, and the DRC/ERC quality-gate summaries.
   • RELEASE-SUMMARY.md — a human-readable summary of the same evidence.
5. If the release fails partway, the folder is marked with RELEASE-INCOMPLETE.txt so partial artifacts are never mistaken for a finished bundle.

Unsupported outputs are never skipped silently; the export step surfaces the KiCad CLI capabilities that were available when the bundle was produced.