From schematic to prototype, how Claude Fable 5.2 designed three electronic devices

Three prototypes designed by Claude Fable 5.2 and built by Diode worked without any circuit changes, according to Anthropic.

To fit the circuit board into the conference speakerphone’s enclosure, it had to go in at an angle of about 25 degrees. In the 3D model, the microphone mute switch hit the enclosure wall when the board was lowered flat. Claude Fable 5.2 checked that tilting the board gave the switch enough clearance, then added that step to the assembly instructions.

The USB-C speakerphone was one of three devices designed in an experiment Anthropic ran with Diode Computers. The others were a home voice assistant hub and a battery-powered handheld virtual pet. Each project started with a one-paragraph prompt. From that description, the model wrote the specifications, selected components, designed the circuit boards and enclosures, and wrote the firmware. Diode’s engineers manufactured, assembled, and tested the devices. Routing the traces meant revisiting earlier decisions

On the voice assistant board, the USB and Ethernet connections carry signals over pairs of copper traces. The model routed those connections first and adjusted the traces so both in each pair were the same length. Small zigzags added length where needed so the signals would arrive at the same time.

The speakerphone presented a different problem. The traces beneath its touch control had to stay on a single layer to avoid drilling through the electrodes that detect a finger. Claude reassigned signals to different pins on two chips so the traces could pass without crossing. Later, when the back of the board got too crowded, the model rerouted an entire corner. An enclosure that changes how the microphone picks up sound

The shape of the voice assistant hub’s enclosure affected its acoustics. Claude calculated that a 25-millimeter channel from the outside to the microphone would resonate at around 3.4 kHz, within a frequency range important for speech. The model designed a wedge-shaped enclosure with a lower front, shortening the microphone channels to about 10 millimeters. That raised the estimated resonant frequency to 8.9 kHz.

On the speakerphone, the model addressed a hardware constraint in the firmware. It programmed the LED ring to dim as the audio volume increased, keeping the two functions within the board’s current limit. From design files to the workbench

Before sending the files to Diode, Claude checked component availability and compared the board layouts with the manufacturer’s production limits. On the voice assistant board, the check flagged six strips of protective solder mask that were too narrow to manufacture. The model adjusted the openings to eliminate those strips without moving any components.

According to Anthropic, each board was ready for manufacturing in under a day. Diode fabricated all three boards from the submitted files, then assembled and tested the devices. Anthropic says all three prototypes worked without any circuit changes. Electrical validation, antenna tuning, thermal testing, and certification are still pending. The lab also plans to test whether the model can revise a design using measurements from an assembled device.