Inventory for Rapid Prototyping

I've heard good things about apps like SuperCook, which let you list the ingredients you have in your cupboards and fridge such that they then generate lists of recipes you can cook using what you have on hand. I personally haven't felt compelled to use such apps, as I feel comfortable enough to wield herbs and spices in an experimental way, adding dashes of spice to taste, but when it comes to more finitely deterministic ingredients such as integrated circuits and other semiconductors, I tend to like a bit of proof and validation behind my work before I start powering things up. Much like cooking, electronics tend not to be as enjoyable once they've burnt.

I've recently found that Anthropic's Claude models (Sonnet 4.5, and more recently Opus 4.6) perform quite well at electrical schematic design and validation. This has been great for rapid prototyping with breadboard circuits where the overhead to go from idea to fictional prototype seems to be very low. Ill get into the details of what I've been building in a future post, but for now I wanted to share a few notes about the workflow I've been using.

For our last anniversary, my wife got me a handful of miscellaneous electrical component kits which I have been using the heck out of (1st wedding anniversaries traditionally have the theme of "paper", but I think "semiconductor" might be a good modern equivalent). From the title photo on this post it's the:

• Assorted Resistor Assortment Kit: https://amzn.to/3OxhKEL
• 30 Assorted General Purpose Transistors Kit: https://amzn.to/3M3J3Ga
• 20 Models Chip Assortment Set: https://amzn.to/4ckzywN
• Multi-pack of Breadboards ❤️: https://amzn.to/4cpLixY (back to that cooking reference I guess)

I highly recommend these kits, and I will be getting more soon.

Inventory Workflow