The editor

Schematic

The schematic editor works with real KiCad symbol libraries, reads real KiCad schematic files, and carries a project's electrical intent — nets, sheets, ERC — the same way any sheet-based schematic editor does.

Symbols

Press A to place a symbol. The Symbol Chooser searches the installed library — 22,744 symbols across 221 libraries — ranked by name, value or keyword; typing a part number like "LM358" or something generic like "resistor" both work. A search can also be narrowed to one library.

The Choose Symbol dialog, opened by pressing A, searched for 'crystal', with the matching symbols listed on the left, a count of how many of the library matched, and a preview of the selected symbol on the right.
The Symbol Chooser, searched for a crystal. The line under the field says how much of the library matched.

Symbols are the real KiCad symbol set, bundled with the app, not a redrawn subset — the pin layout, the graphic body and the reference designator prefix all come from the same .kicad_sym files KiCad itself ships.

Wires, labels, junctions

Press W to wire two pins together, and L to drop a net label — the way to name a connection instead of drawing it across the whole sheet. Junctions and no-connect flags are their own tools, reachable from the command palette (CtrlK) when they are not already on the toolbar.

The schematic editor's floating tool dock: select, wire, label, hierarchical sheet and sheet pin tools, with a command-palette chip at the end.
The schematic dock — six tools, and the command-palette chip that reaches everything else.

Hierarchical sheets

A schematic can be split into sheets, each one its own canvas with its own symbols and wires, connected to the rest of the project through sheet pins. Cross-sheet connectivity — whether a net on one sheet actually reaches the same net on another — is tracked as part of the project, not recomputed only when you ask.

The electrical check

The schematic is checked across every sheet in the project, not just the sheet on screen, and the count sits in the status bar at the bottom of the window. It is not a command you run. There is no ERC row in the Tools menu and no ERC dialog: the check is recomputed with the document on every read, so the number you are looking at is always current and there is no stale green to be fooled by. ERC as a thing you call exists only as the agent's run_erc tool, which reads the same result.

The title block

Project-level metadata — title, revision, date, company and four comment fields — is set once and printed on the drawing sheet frame in the schematic, the board editor, and every plot. The date field defaults to today's date and the rest starts blank; nothing is inferred from the design.

The Drawing Sheet Editor showing the drawing sheet frame and a Project Title Block panel with Title, Revision, Date (filled in as 2026-08-07), Company, and Comment1 through Comment4 fields.
The project title block, open in the Drawing Sheet Editor — the date field already carries today's date; the rest starts blank.

Custom symbols

The Symbol Editor opens any installed symbol or a blank one, edits pins and graphics, and saves back to a real .kicad_sym file — the same format the bundled library ships in, so a symbol you save here shows up in the Symbol Chooser exactly like a library one.

The Symbol Editor's toolbar (Open, Save, Clear, Check Symbol, Place on Schematic) and its Symbol Properties panel for a new blank symbol, showing Name, Ref Prefix, Description, Keywords and an empty pin list.
The Symbol Editor, opened from Tools → Symbol Editor — a blank symbol's properties and pin list.

Bringing in existing work

Rivet PCB reads real .kicad_sch files and real Altium schematic files on import. That import is read-only: it brings the design into the app's own project format, it does not keep a live link back to the original file, and there is no export back out to .kicad_sch. Individual symbols round-trip through the Symbol Editor regardless of where a schematic came from.