Anthropic says Claude Fable 5.2 designed three electronic devices

Anthropic says its Claude Fable 5.2 model can design and prototype electronic hardware from start to finish, working with Diode Computers to build three devices: a speakerphone, a voice-assistant hub, and a handheld virtual pet.

Designing three devices

Anthropic says Claude Fable 5.2 wrote specifications, drew schematics, placed components on printed circuit boards, routed copper connections, designed 3D-printable enclosures, coded firmware, and prepared parts lists for all three devices. Diode assembled the circuit boards and ran the firmware under Claude's direction. The prototypes still work after weeks of use, according to Anthropic.

For the speakerphone, the prompt asked for "a puck that plugs into a computer over USB-C and includes microphones and a speaker, supporting Bluetooth with a PCB antenna."

Benchmark results

Anthropic says Fable 5.2 scored 69% on Diode's PCB Gym benchmark, compared with 25% for Fable 5. On BenchCAD 2.1, Fable 5.2 scored 83.5%, nearly double the score of Claude Fable 5.1.

Revising designs and manufacturing

Anthropic says Claude revised its own work without prompting. When designing the speakerphone's four-layer circuit board, it reassigned signals to different pins on two chips. For the voice-assistant hub, it deleted and rerouted copper connections dozens of times after deciding the connections were "getting too tangled to trace visually."

Diode manufactured all three boards directly from Claude's design files. The Diode team told Anthropic they were surprised they did not have to go through multiple rounds of manufacturing changes.

All three devices remain prototypes and have not been through electrical validation, antenna tuning, thermal testing, or certification, and were not designed for mass production.

Why it matters

Anthropic says the work shows Claude can now design electronics with minimal human guidance and help people build prototypes. The company plans to investigate whether Claude can design denser, faster, and more complex boards, check them in simulation, and learn from measurements taken on finished devices.

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Sources

• anthropic.com: Claude can design electronic prototypes from start to finish \ Anthropic

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.