# Boards & Bots

> A directory of AI agents doing real hardware work: firmware, board bring-up, hardware-in-the-loop testing, robotics, PCB design and lab instruments. Every entry says how sure we are that it works.

We find and check new entries every day. A collector scans GitHub, Hacker News, Hackaday, arXiv, dev.to, npm and blog feeds for candidates; a curator reads each one, writes a summary in our own words (40 to 60 words, never the author's text beyond one short credited quote) and tags it. Members will also be able to submit links and write posts once submissions open. The rule for what gets in: an AI agent building, testing or operating real hardware, or a tool an agent uses to do that. If no hardware is involved, it does not belong.

Anything made by the site's own team or paid for by a sponsor carries a disclosure label, and a person always reviews it before it is published.

## How sure we are

Every entry has one of three verification levels (details: https://boardsandbots.com/verification):

- verified (Verified on our bench): Someone on the Boards & Bots team ran it on hardware and it worked.
- evidence (Shown working): The source shows it running on hardware, with video, logs, scope captures or hardware CI results.
- claimed (Claimed): The author describes it but shows no evidence we could check yet.

Only a person on the team can mark an entry verified.

## Sections

- [Tools](https://boardsandbots.com/tools): Repos, MCP servers, CLIs and libraries that connect an AI agent to boards and bench gear.
- [Builds](https://boardsandbots.com/builds): Boards, robots and rigs that people built or fixed with an agent.
- [Magic Smoke](https://boardsandbots.com/magic-smoke): Times an agent bricked a board, fried a pin or was confidently wrong, with the cause the author found.
- [Guides](https://boardsandbots.com/guides): How-tos and workflows for putting an agent to work on your bench.
- [News](https://boardsandbots.com/news): Launches, releases, funding and papers about agents doing hardware work.
- [Discussions](https://boardsandbots.com/discuss): Questions, show-and-tell and conversations started by members.

Browse by what is on your bench: [Areas](https://boardsandbots.com/areas), [Boards](https://boardsandbots.com/boards), [Instruments](https://boardsandbots.com/instruments), [Agents](https://boardsandbots.com/agents), [Interfaces](https://boardsandbots.com/interfaces). Each tag has a page at https://boardsandbots.com/t/<facet>/<slug>, for example https://boardsandbots.com/t/instrument/logic-analyzer.

- Entry pages: https://boardsandbots.com/e/<slug>; short links https://boardsandbots.com/bb/<catalog number>
- Search: https://boardsandbots.com/search?q=<words>
- About and how entries are found: https://boardsandbots.com/about

## Read the directory as data

- [JSON API docs](https://boardsandbots.com/api): read-only, no key, CORS open, cached for 5 minutes.
- `GET https://boardsandbots.com/api/v1/entries`: published entries, newest or hottest first. Filters: kind (tool, build, fail, guide, news, discussion), area, board, instrument, agent, interface (one tag slug each), verification, sort (hot, new, top), limit (up to 50), before (the nextCursor from the previous page).
- `GET https://boardsandbots.com/api/v1/entries/<slug>`: one entry with our briefing (Markdown).
- `GET https://boardsandbots.com/api/v1/tags`: every tag with its entry count; `?facet=board` for one facet.
- MCP server: https://boardsandbots.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, read-only, no key). Add it to Claude Code with `claude mcp add --transport http boards-and-bots https://boardsandbots.com/mcp`; other clients take the URL as a remote HTTP server. Tools: search_entries (query, kind, limit), get_entry (catalog number like BB-0142, slug or URL), list_tools_for (board, instrument, agent, interface or area tag; e.g. instrument logic-analyzer plus interface mcp for MCP servers that drive a Saleae), latest (kind, limit, since). Details: https://boardsandbots.com/api#mcp.
- [RSS, every kind](https://boardsandbots.com/feed.xml); per kind, e.g. [Tools](https://boardsandbots.com/feed/tools.xml); per tag at https://boardsandbots.com/t/<facet>/<slug>/feed.xml.
- [Sitemap](https://boardsandbots.com/sitemap-index.xml)

## Optional

- [Community guidelines](https://boardsandbots.com/guidelines)
- [Takedown requests](https://boardsandbots.com/takedown)
- [The Boot Log, our weekly email](https://boardsandbots.com/newsletter)