TURN EDA INTO AN INTERACTIVE AI WORKFLOW — NOT A ONE-SHOT SCRIPT
HOW TO CONNECT AI AGENTS WITH EDA
Traditional approaches fail to bridge AI Agents and EDA tools efficiently. Using MCP introduces heavy context overhead, consumes excessive tokens, and increases hallucination risks. Function call logs are often hard to interpret, and integration depends heavily on EDA vendor’s adaptation.
On the other hand, running EDA tools through CLI scripts forces a one-shot execution model. Every iteration restart from scratch, wasting time on repeated initialization and preventing efficient incremental exploration.
2cli is purpose-built for agents. It provides a CLI tailored for AI Agents, eliminating unnecessary context consumption while enabling step-by-step control. With native support for EDA interactive shells, tab completion, and man page control, 2cli delivers a reliable and efficient bridge between AI and EDA workflows.
2CLI MAKES AI WORK LIKE A CHIP ENGINEER
•Launch any EDA tools
% 2cli -start dashrtl -no_gui
2cli launched pid 12345
•Send commands to EDA tools
% 2cli puts hello
Hello
dashrtl-tcl>
•Send partial commands + Tab to EDA tools to get suggestions
% 2cli ‘report\t’
report_black_box report_sv_compatibility
dashrtl-tcl>
•Send commands with page mode (e.g., man) to EDA tools
% 2cli man set
PROCEDURE: set
SYNTAX: set varName ?newValue?
DESCRIPTION: Optionally create or modify the variable or array to ’newValue’, and return current value.
•Install the 2cli skill
Copy examples/agent_skills/eda-2cli from the package into the AI Agent’s skills directory
KEY FEATURES
Interactive Control
Send commands step by step, observe responses instantly, enabling iterative debugging and efficient AI-driven EDA workflows
Process Management
Launch and manage multiple EDA processes simultaneously, allowing flexible control, monitoring, and switching between active tool environments
Smart Assistance
Leverage tab completion and man page automation to help AI discover commands, understand usage, and operate tools intelligently