The week on the bench · Monday to Sunday, UTC
Week 35, 2026 · 24 to 30 August
12 entries published: 4 tools, 3 builds, 1 Magic Smoke, 2 guides, 2 news. This page lists what was published; it is not a newsletter issue.
The week as a scope trace
One channel per kind, one pulse per entry at the hour it was published. Taller pulses have more points.
Build of the week · BB-0183
Claude Code ports a BBC Micro emulator to the Adafruit Fruit Jam
Andrew de Quincey had Claude Code port the Frank Micro BBC Micro emulator to the RP2350-based Adafruit Fruit Jam. Claude studied the codebase, planned around clock and PIO conflicts and wrote a script for the audio codec registers. Photos show the emulator booted over HDMI. It ran Exile, and an odd Mac keyboard was the only snag.
Tools4
All tools2 mo ago
quackd: a Python CLI that drives registered robots with LLM-chosen skills
quackd registers robots by name and has an LLM work toward a typed goal by calling one named skill per turn. Goals come from a terminal or from Claude over MCP, within step and time budgets, confirm gates and dry runs. The README lists eight robot bodies. Only a LeRobot SO-101 arm has run on hardware.
Claimed2 mo ago
flashgate: a hardware-in-the-loop check for firmware an agent just built
flashgate checks whether firmware an agent just built runs on an STM32 board. It flashes over ST-Link, waits for a boot banner carrying the git hash, drives features over the console and checks register readbacks. Each run ends with an exit code and a JSON record. The README includes console output from an STM32H743 bench.
Shown working2 mo ago
edge-mhs: Fastly's safety gateway for Model Hardware Standard devices
edge-mhs places a Fastly Compute gateway between an MCP-speaking agent and a Model Hardware Standard driver runtime. It checks tool-call arguments against each device's declared safety limits, enforces per-device quotas and logs every decision with hashed IDs. The README calls it an agent-generated reference implementation, tested only against a mock backend.
Claimed2 mo ago
STM32 AutoDebug Universal Kit: compile, flash and HardFault triage for agents
STM32 AutoDebug Universal Kit compiles STM32 firmware with Keil MDK, flashes it over SWD and waits for a pass token on the serial port. On a HardFault it reads the fault registers and maps the PC to a source line. Every result is an exit code. It is Windows-only; the README shows example output from an STM32F103C8T6.
Claimed
Builds3
All builds2 mo ago
Claude Code ports a BBC Micro emulator to the Adafruit Fruit Jam
Andrew de Quincey had Claude Code port the Frank Micro BBC Micro emulator to the RP2350-based Adafruit Fruit Jam. Claude studied the codebase, planned around clock and PIO conflicts and wrote a script for the audio codec registers. Photos show the emulator booted over HDMI. It ran Exile, and an odd Mac keyboard was the only snag.
Shown working2 mo ago
Iluvatar Labs' research agent routes AgentPad13, a $35 Codex Micro clone
Iluvatar Labs had its research agent, Marvin, route AgentPad13, a two-layer RP2040 macropad modeled on OpenAI's Codex Micro. Marvin reached zero unrouted connections and zero DRC errors; FreeRouting and Quilter had left 18 and 19 unrouted. It also built and simulated the QMK firmware. Photos show the lit prototype.
Shown working2 mo ago
Board bring-up from scratch: agentic AI blinks an LED on a new NXP FRDM-MCXN236
Pyjama Cafe's embedded-systems channel takes a new NXP FRDM-MCXN236 board from no prior knowledge to a blinking LED with agentic AI. Along the way the 94-minute video covers the Cortex-M family and the board's user guide. It ends with the LED blinking on the board.
Shown working
Magic Smoke1
All Magic Smoke2 mo ago
XDA tests Claude Sonnet 5 and Opus 5 on ESP32 strapping-pin choices
XDA's Adam Conway ran the same ESP32 wiring prompt 15 times across Claude Sonnet 5 and Opus 5. With a vague prompt, Sonnet put a display's DC line on strapping pin GPIO2 in 3 of 6 runs, twice after naming the rule. Opus never did, though one run misstated the rule. He writes that naming the exact board helped both.
Claimed
Guides2
All guides2 mo ago
Jacob Beningo on MCP bench tools, power cycling and datasheet retrieval
In a Design News article, Jacob Beningo describes three tricks for using AI agents in embedded development. He recommends putting debuggers and logic analyzers behind MCP servers and grounding driver code in datasheets through retrieval. He power-cycles boards with uhubctl, a Yepkit YKUSH hub or two BK Precision 1685B supplies. The article reports no measured results.
Claimed2 mo ago
A CLAUDE.md and playbook for taking Arduino circuits to custom PCBs
Two Markdown files in a CC0 repo guide Claude Code from a breadboard-proven Arduino circuit to a fabricated KiCad board. CLAUDE.md points the agent at a playbook in which it checks each part, writes one Python generator for schematic and board, and clears ERC and DRC. The author says every rule came from boards that shipped.
Claimed
News2
All news2 mo ago
Anthropic previews the Model Hardware Standard for agents running lab equipment
Anthropic opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard, a shared driver spec for agents that operate lab and manufacturing devices. Each device describes its settings and enforced safety limits, and agents reach it over MCP, a CLI or code. In a QuEra case study, an agent-improved laser relock script worked in 99.3% of 700 trials.
Claimed2 mo ago
Agentic AI operates an atomic force microscope in live experiments
Zahra Ayar, Georg Fantner and colleagues published a paper on three MCP-connected agents that run an atomic force microscope. One converts plain-language requests to checked commands, one judges image quality and retunes imaging, and one diagnoses artifacts. In live experiments, the paper says, the tuning agent did as well as expert operators. No code is linked.
Claimed
