text-to-cad Hands Your Coding Agent a Machine Shop
text-to-cad is at 9k stars, 1k forks, version 0.3.9 shipped this month, and it is trending because it does something the skills ecosystem has mostly avoided: it ends at a physical object.
It is a library of ten skills for Claude Code and Codex. CAD generates and edits 3D models with STEP output plus STL, 3MF and GLB export. CAD Viewer gives a local browser preview for CAD files, G-code and robot files so the agent can look at what it made. step.parts sources off-the-shelf components, fasteners and motors. DXF handles 2D drawings and cutting layouts. URDF writes robot structure files with joints and inertials, SRDF adds MoveIt planning groups and collision rules, SDF builds simulator models with physics and sensors. SendCutSend validates a file before you upload it to the fabrication service. G-code slices meshes into printer-ready files using actual slicer CLIs. Bambu Labs manages print jobs with a dry-run mode.
Line those up and the chain is the story. Plain language or an image goes in, a STEP model comes out, it gets validated against a real fab service's constraints, and an order goes out for laser-cut steel. Or it goes the other way: mesh, real slicer, G-code, Bambu printer, part in your hand. The agent is not producing a file for a human to check and forward. It is driving the toolchain end to end and the last step is a machine turning on.
The robotics half deserves separate attention. URDF, SRDF and SDF are the description formats that define what a robot is to a planner and a simulator, and they are miserable to write by hand. Handing an agent the ability to author and iterate them is a much bigger deal than the 3D printing demos suggest, because it puts the agent upstream of the whole sim-to-real loop rather than inside it.
Most agent skills operate on text that stays text. This one operates on text that becomes aluminum. That is a different category, and 9k stars says a lot of people building hardware noticed. github.com/earthtojake/text-to-cad
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It is a library of ten skills for Claude Code and Codex. CAD generates and edits 3D models with STEP output plus STL, 3MF and GLB export. CAD Viewer gives a local browser preview for CAD files, G-code and robot files so the agent can look at what it made. step.parts sources off-the-shelf components, fasteners and motors. DXF handles 2D drawings and cutting layouts. URDF writes robot structure files with joints and inertials, SRDF adds MoveIt planning groups and collision rules, SDF builds simulator models with physics and sensors. SendCutSend validates a file before you upload it to the fabrication service. G-code slices meshes into printer-ready files using actual slicer CLIs. Bambu Labs manages print jobs with a dry-run mode.
Line those up and the chain is the story. Plain language or an image goes in, a STEP model comes out, it gets validated against a real fab service's constraints, and an order goes out for laser-cut steel. Or it goes the other way: mesh, real slicer, G-code, Bambu printer, part in your hand. The agent is not producing a file for a human to check and forward. It is driving the toolchain end to end and the last step is a machine turning on.
The robotics half deserves separate attention. URDF, SRDF and SDF are the description formats that define what a robot is to a planner and a simulator, and they are miserable to write by hand. Handing an agent the ability to author and iterate them is a much bigger deal than the 3D printing demos suggest, because it puts the agent upstream of the whole sim-to-real loop rather than inside it.
Most agent skills operate on text that stays text. This one operates on text that becomes aluminum. That is a different category, and 9k stars says a lot of people building hardware noticed. github.com/earthtojake/text-to-cad
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