AI Assistant (Pro)

The AI assistant lives in the right sidebar of the simulator. Click the “AI” tab in the sidebar header, or the AI button in the toolbar, to open it.

What it does

• Review project. Walks through the current circuit and calls out problems: floating IC supply pins, missing decoupling, LEDs without series resistors, supply-direct-to-component shortcuts, etc.
• Fix bug. Proposes a structured edit plan that brings the circuit into line with the breadboarding conventions de:volt checks.
• Generate. Given a description (“RGB LED on Arduino pins 9–11”), the AI emits a complete breadboard layout using rails and tie-points.
• Explain selected. Select a component, then ask for an explanation that references the live net voltages and currents.

Asking it things

Type in the box at the bottom of the panel. The assistant reads the message and decides whether to change the board or answer in prose; when it cannot tell, it asks with two chips (Change the board / Just answer) at no cost to your quota.

To choose yourself:

• Start the message with a slash command: /ask answers in prose, /fix and /build change the board (the simulator decides between repairing what is there and building fresh), /explain and /review are the Explain and Review buttons spelled out. A bare /fix, /explain or /review sends the same request as the button.
• Or set the Auto / Change board / Just answer toggle under the box. It sticks for the project. A slash command overrides it for that one message.

Questions can be about electronics or about de:volt itself: the meter, the scope and analysis tools, the Inspector, the diagnostics, the breadboard rules, plans and quotas, or the assistant. Answers come back in the language you wrote in; component and pin ids stay as they appear on the canvas.

How it edits your circuit

The AI never changes your circuit directly. Every proposed change is an edit plan that:

1. Goes through de:volt’s circuit checks (no LED without a series resistor, ICs straddle the centre gap, no rail-to-rail shorts, no floating IC supply pins, etc.).
2. Renders on the canvas as a green and red diff overlay: added items in green, removed items in red.
3. Only applies when you press Accept. The whole plan applies as a single undo step, so pressing Undo reverts the entire change.

If the validators reject the plan, the Accept button is disabled and the specific findings are shown above it. Reject discards the plan.

Plan and quota

The assistant is part of Pro, and the 7-day Pro trial includes it with 20 AI requests over the whole trial. Hobby does not include AI: a Hobby account can still open the panel and read its past chats, but cannot send new requests. Signed-out users see the panel with a sign-in prompt and cannot send requests.

Pro accounts get 100 AI requests a month. The footer of the panel shows your daily and monthly usage. When you use up the month’s allowance the panel tells you the date it resets, nothing further is charged, and the allowance comes back at the start of the next month.

The Learn tutor is separate

The simulator’s AI assistant is not the same as the AI tutor inside de:volt Learn. The Learn tutor is a Socratic hint helper that nudges you toward the next step of a lesson without writing the answer; it is ephemeral (no per-prompt storage) and available to Pro learners aged 13 or older. The simulator assistant described here edits circuits; the Learn tutor coaches lessons. See de:volt Learn for the tutor.

Privacy

Each request sends a compact snapshot of your current project along with your message: component kinds and ids, pin nets, parameters, the latest net voltages and currents from the live simulator, and the diagnostics findings. No account information is included.

The request is answered by a third-party language model. If your project contains sensitive component labels or notes, treat the assistant the way you would treat any other AI service. See the Privacy Policy for the full AI data notice.

Safety and reliability

AI output can be incomplete, wrong, or unsafe. Treat every generated circuit, fix, explanation, and edit plan as a draft, and check it against datasheets, safe bench practice, and real measurements before you build hardware or buy parts. The assistant is not engineering advice, and it must not be the only basis for mains, medical, vehicle, aviation, life-safety, or other regulated or high-risk work.