Altium MCP Server

TLDR: Use Claude to control or ask questions about your Altium project. This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides an interface to interact with Altium Designer through Python. The server allows for querying and manipulation of PCB designs programmatically.

Note: Having Claude place components on the PCB currently fails hard.

Example commands

• Run all output jobs
• Create a symbol for the part in the attached datasheet and use the currently open symbol as a reference example.
• Create a schematic symbol from the attached MPM3650 switching regulator datasheet and make sure to strictly follow the symbol placement rules. (Note: Need to open a schematic library. Uses AppData\Roaming\Claude\Claude Extensions\local.dxt.altium-mcp\server\symbol_placement_rules.txt description as pin placement rules. Please modify for your own preferences.)
• Find me the LM358 symbol in my opamp library and open it
• Create a multi-part symbol for a quad op-amp from the attached LM324 datasheet (creates parts A, B, C, D with shared V+/V- power pins)
• Create a PCB footprint for the SMD part in the attached datasheet and add it to my open PcbLib
• Duplicate my selected layout. (Will prompt user to now select destination components. Supports Component, Track, Arc, Via, Polygon, & Region)
• Show all my inner layers. Show the top and bottom layer. Turn off solder paste.
• Get me all parts on my design made by Molex
• Give me the description and part number of U4
• Place the selected parts on my pcb with best practices for a switching regulator. Note: It tries, but does terrible placement. Hopefully I can find a way to improve this.
• Give me a list of all IC designators in my design
• Get me all length matching rules

Installing the MCP Server

The easiest way to install is to use Claude Code, point it to this repo and ask it to install it for you. Or alternatively, see below.

Watch on YouTube

1. Make sure Claude has Python 3.10+ installed: drop down > File > Settings > Extensions > Advanced > Python. If not, install Python and add it to PATH.
2. Download the altium-mcp.dxt desktop extension file from releases
3. In Claude Desktop on Windows: drop down > File > Settings > Extensions > Advanced > Install Extension... Select the .dxt file

You shouldn't need to restart Claude and you should now see altium-mcp in the tool menu near the search bar.

Creating a new .dxt (For Developers)

Bootstrap Venv (Recommended)

This approach ships a small bootstrap script (start_server.py) that creates a virtual environment and pip-installs dependencies on the user's machine at first launch. The .dxt is tiny (~60 KB) and works across any Python 3.10+ version.

The older approach of bundling pre-compiled packages in server/lib/ is no longer recommended — it breaks when the user's Python version doesn't match the version used to build the bundled .pyd files (e.g. pydantic_core compiled for 3.11 fails on 3.13).

How it works:

1. start_server.py (at the repo root) checks for server/.venv/Scripts/python.exe
2. If the venv doesn't exist, it creates one and pip-installs the pinned dependencies
3. It then launches server/main.py using the venv's Python
4. First launch takes ~20-30 seconds; subsequent launches are instant

Build steps:

1. Make sure start_server.py exists at the repo root (see below for contents)
2. Make sure server/main.py does NOT have the old site.addsitedir hack at the top
3. Update manifest.json: set entry_point to start_server.py, remove any env/PYTHONPATH fields, and use manifest_version: "0.3"
4. Package the DXT — either use dxt pack or manually zip and rename:

Compress-Archive -Path manifest.json, start_server.py, pyproject.toml, server -DestinationPath altium-mcp.zip
Rename-Item altium-mcp.zip alti

... [View full README on GitHub](https://github.com/coffeenmusic/altium-mcp#readme)