SchemaTrace Studio

Interactive Schematic Viewer with Click-to-Trace Highlighting and a Built-In AI Copilot

Native C++17 schematic viewer for KiCad (.kicad_sch) and Eagle (.sch XML) files with full hierarchical sheet support. Click any trace and the entire electrical net lights up end-to-end while the rest of the board dims; click any component to see its complete pin list, types, and connections in a live inspector. Includes built-in electrical rule checks (unconnected pins, undriven power rails, conflicting outputs, dangling wires, duplicate references), a net-to-net path tracer through passive components, BOM and netlist export, and an AI assistant with real tool access to inspect, trace, and highlight the open schematic — works fully offline with Ollama or with any OpenAI-compatible provider.

Purchase License ($39.99) Open Live Web Portal

Real Desktop Application Screens • Captured from the Running Program

100% Native Executable Node-Lock Verified

Head-to-Head Competitor Analysis

Why SchemaTrace Studio is cheaper, faster, and more secure than KiCad Eeschema (free) / Altium 365 Viewer.

Comparison Metric	SchemaTrace Studio	KiCad Eeschema (free) / Altium 365 Viewer
License Model & Price	$39.99 (One-Time Perpetual)	Free (no AI, manual ratsnest highlighting) or $10,000+/yr enterprise cloud viewer
Annual Financial Savings	Save $9,960+/yr vs. Altium 365; free users gain AI assistance KiCad doesn't offer at any price every single year
Competitor Drawbacks	KiCad's own viewer has no AI assistant and only partial ratsnest highlighting; Altium's viewer requires a cloud account and subscription and still has no tool-calling AI
Why Vivian Is Better	One-time $39.99 perpetual license, instant offline net highlighting, built-in path tracer and ERC, and an AI copilot that can actually see and highlight the schematic instead of just chatting about it
Execution Environment	100% Offline Air-Gapped	Mandatory cloud check-in
Runtime Telemetry	Zero Telemetry (0.00KB sent)	Cloud telemetry & user tracking

Engineering Specifications & Features

Click-to-highlight: select any wire and its whole net glows end-to-end across every sheet, with everything else dimmed

Click any component for a live inspector: every pin, its type, its connected net, footprint, datasheet, and properties

Native KiCad 6–10 (.kicad_sch) and Eagle 6–9 (.sch XML) parsers with full hierarchical sheet traversal

AI copilot with real tool calls — list/inspect components and nets, trace paths, run ERC, search, and highlight the view it's discussing

Net-to-net path tracer: "what's between R1 and U3" returns the exact net-by-net, component-by-component route through passives

Built-in electrical rule checker: unconnected pins, undriven power, output conflicts, dangling wires, duplicate refs, case-mismatched net names

Four built-in themes (dark, light, blueprint, paper) and a tunable information-density setting (minimal/standard/verbose)

BOM (CSV) and plain-text netlist export, plus full-schematic JSON dump and SVG export with the current highlight baked in

Graphical Interface (GUI) Architecture

GTK3/Cairo workspace: pan/zoom canvas with click-to-highlight and hover tooltips, tabbed sidebar (Inspector / ERC / AI Assistant), sheet tabs for hierarchical designs, and a full Settings dialog (Appearance + AI provider/key/model/tool-calling mode).

Headless CLI Reference & Execution

SchemaTrace Studio includes a headless command-line binary ready for automation pipelines, cron daemons, and CI/CD runners:

# Headless command execution:
schematrace --trace board.kicad_sch R1 GND   |   schematrace --erc board.kicad_sch   |   schematrace --ask board.kicad_sch "what's wrong with the power rail?"
# Cryptographic node-lock activation:
schematrace --activate YOUR-CROCKFORD-KEY

Console Command Reference

16 commands • v1.0.0

Every console command the SchemaTrace Studio binary accepts. Run schematrace --help for the same list on your machine.

Command	Arguments	Description
--summary	<file>	Print a schematic overview: title, sheets, components, nets, power rails
--list-components	<file>	List every component with value, kind, and footprint
--component	<file> <ref>	Show one component's full pin list and net connections
--list-nets	<file>	List every net with pin and wire-segment counts
--net	<file> <name>	Show one net's full connection detail
--trace	<file> <from> <to>	Trace the electrical path between two points through passives
--erc	<file>	Run electrical rule checks and print every issue found
--bom	<file>	Print the bill of materials as CSV
--netlist	<file>	Print a plain-text netlist grouped by net
--json	<file>	Dump the full schematic (components, nets, labels) as JSON
--svg	<file> <out.svg>	Render a sheet to a standalone SVG file
--ask	<file> "question"	Ask the configured AI about the open schematic (uses its tools)
--settings	—	Print every current setting
--set	<key> <value>	Change one setting, e.g. ai.provider ollama
--sample	—	Use the built-in 555 LED blinker demo instead of a file
--activate	<KEY> \| --deactivate \| --license \| --gui	Online Activation Authority: https://licenseguard.d0a.net

Core Architecture & Asymmetric Security

Format-neutral C++17 schematic data model shared by every subsystem: hand-written S-expression (KiCad) and XML (Eagle) parsers, union-find net extraction with wire/junction/label merging, a backend-neutral Painter interface (Cairo for the live GTK view, a second implementation for SVG export) so highlighting and hit-testing use identical geometry on screen and on disk, and an OpenAI-compatible tool-calling engine with a native and a text-fallback mode for models without function calling.