Copilot Reference

Copilot is your new browser-based electronics AI design assistant. Copilot lives in your Flux projects, answers complex questions, and helps you move faster by wiring up your schematics.

Overview

Copilot is the industry’s first AI-powered hardware design assistant integrated right into a PCB design tool. It is a custom-trained large language model (LLM) that understands your schematics, components, electrical connections, and bill of materials. This allows Copilot to help you with part selection, evaluate alternatives, give design feedback, and with your approval, act on your schematic to help you move faster.

We’re exploring the very edge of AI and hardware design, and we want to do it with our community. This tutorial explores some of the guidelines and best practices we’ve found during the initial testing phase, but we’d love to see what other use cases you find. Join the Copilot channel in our Slack community, and let’s explore the future of PCB design.

Getting Started with Copilot

Copilot uses conversational AI, meaning you’ll be interacting with it by tagging @copilot in a comment or the chat menu. To learn how to leverage AI in your design process, and find useful questions and prompts, please take a look at our AI-assisted PCB design tutorial.

Using Copilot

Starting a conversation

To start a conversation with Copilot, tag it by adding @copilot to any comment. Once tagged in a thread, it will continue to respond to new replies. In the same way, if you reply to a message Copilot sent, it will reply to your message. To summarize:

• If Copilot is @-mentioned in a message, it will reply to that message in the same thread. It will also continue to respond in that thread to new replies.
• Copilot will respond if @-mentioned in any message of a thread. It doesn’t need to be the first message.
• If Copilot posts a message and a user replies to that message, Copilot will respond.

Copilot Experts

Copilot Experts are specialized AI models, each fine-tuned for specific tasks to deliver sharper accuracy and faster performance. Every time you interact with Copilot you can choose the expert that better matches your expected outcome by clicking on the copilot icon below the text box.

• Generalist: is a versatile, jack-of-all-trades assistant, ready to tackle a wide array of queries. For instance, ask the Generalist: @copilot, can you explain what’s happening in this circuit?
• Librarian: shines when it comes to parts inquiries and navigating through datasheets to delve into specifics about a component. For example, ask the Librarian: @copilot am I using the right amount of decoupling for U1?
• Helper: is the go-to for Flux product guidance. Ask the helper questions about how to use the tool if you don’t feel like sifting through the documentation. For example: @copilot how do I change the stackup of my PCB?

What can Copilot do?

• Answer questions: Copilot can respond with highly relevant information to help you select parts, provide feedback, optimize your circuit, etc. Learn more.
• Parse component datasheets: Copilot can save you reading time by accessing datasheets and referencing them in its responses. Learn more.
• Act on your schematic: When Copilot's answer is suggesting specific connections on your schematic, you can have it do those connections for you by clicking on the "Take Action" button. Learn more.
• Access Flux documentation: Copilot can help you learn to use Flux. Learn more.

What Information Does Copilot Have Access To?

Copilot has knowledge of the project it is responding in. This access allows it to analyze and understand the context of your project, enabling it to provide suggestions relevant to your project's needs. Elements of your project Copilot has access to include:

• Project’s name and description: Copilot uses your project name and description to better understand the project's context.
• Project’s components and netlist: Copilot can understand what components you’ve placed in the design and how they are wired together. This helps it provide feedback about other compatible parts and check for logical errors in your design.
• Part numbers and datasheets: Copilot can access component datasheets available online to answer questions about part compatibility or design choices.
• Location of the comments: Copilot knows where you have physically placed comments in the canvas. This means it can understand the local context of your question within the project. For example, if you ask how to current-limit a specific LED, Copilot will know which one you’re referring to.
• Flux Documentation: Copilot has full access to Flux documentation and tutorials so you can ask Copilot how to perform any action in Flux.

Privacy

At Flux, we prioritize your privacy and firmly believe that your data belongs to you. For more details about our commitment to protecting your privacy, please refer to our Privacy Statement

Known Limitations

• Can only read messages within a given thread: When Copilot replies in a thread, it will account for only the messages in that thread. A thread includes a top-level message and its replies. It will not know what was said or asked of it in other threads. This helps limit the context that its LLM has to deal with, making it easier for it to answer accurately. We hope to expand its ability to handle larger contexts soon.
• Schematic only: Copilot doesn’t know what’s happening on your layout. It only knows what’s happening on your schematic - which parts you’ve used, where you’ve placed them, and how they’re connected. Another limitation we plan to overcome.

Credits

Copilot credits are the currency that enables you to use the Copilot feature beyond its free usage limits. They are designed to help you budget and pay for your Copilot usage, with a system that correlates credit consumption to Copilot usage.

We want everyone to be able to try out Copilot, so every plan includes free credits that are renewed monthly. If you need to access additional credits, you'll need to upgrade to a Pro or Organization plan. Learn more about credits individual users or organizations.