ADS Agent Bridge

An unofficial, local-first documentation and automation bridge for Keysight Advanced Design System (ADS).

[!IMPORTANT] This is a limited public alpha. Use disposable ADS workspaces and review the reported capability gates before relying on automation results. Keysight and ADS are trademarks of Keysight Technologies. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Keysight.

The first release is designed around three commands:

pipx install ads-agent-bridge
ads-agent setup
ads-agent quickstart

The current alpha slice implements cross-platform ADS installation discovery, capability/support reporting, per-installation local documentation indexing, DE/DDS add-on registration, and a headless minimal-AC quickstart with dataset readback.

It does not currently claim a completed Momentum, RFPro, FEM, SIPro, or PIPro workflow. Those lanes require separate solver-side acceptance evidence.

Official ADS documentation is never distributed with this package. Indexes are built privately from documentation already installed on the user's machine.

Set ADS_AGENT_HOME to place configuration, data, and caches under an explicit directory. This is useful for isolated tests, remote servers, and systems where the normal user cache location is not appropriate.

Install and verify

Prerequisites:

• a locally licensed ADS installation;
• Python 3.10 or later for the ads-agent command;
• pipx (recommended) or an isolated virtual environment.

pipx install ads-agent-bridge
ads-agent setup
ads-agent quickstart

When several ADS versions are found, interactive setup asks which one to use. For an unattended or version-specific setup:

ads-agent setup --ads-root /path/to/ADS2026_Update2 --non-interactive

A successful quickstart independently reports documentation, add-on, workspace, circuit simulation, and dataset readback gates. It creates a new disposable workspace and refuses to overwrite an existing path.

Current commands

ads-agent instances scan [--ads-root PATH]
ads-agent instances list
ads-agent instances use INSTANCE_ID
ads-agent compatibility explain [--ads INSTANCE_ID]
ads-agent docs ensure [--ads INSTANCE_ID]
ads-agent docs status [--ads INSTANCE_ID]
ads-agent docs query QUERY [--ads INSTANCE_ID]
ads-agent setup [--ads-root PATH] [--non-interactive] [--config-dir PATH]
ads-agent quickstart [--ads INSTANCE_ID] [--workspace PATH] [--config-dir PATH]
ads-agent addon status
ads-agent bridge sessions

Documentation queries stay on the local machine:

ads-agent docs query "keysight.ads.de workspace" --limit 5

The bridge listens only on localhost and uses a random token per session. Arbitrary embedded Python and dynamic AEL calls are disabled unless ADS is launched with ADS_AGENT_UNSAFE=1 and the client command also includes --unsafe.

On Windows, setup reads Keysight's per-version eeenv/HOME registry values to locate the real hpeesof/config directory. Use --config-dir (or ADS_AGENT_ADS_CONFIG_DIR) when maintaining separate ADS profiles.

On Linux, ADS Python may still require an available X display even though the quickstart opens no ADS window. Set DISPLAY to the intended isolated display before running it. setup edits only the current user's ADS add-on XML files, creates timestamped backups, and preserves unrelated add-ons.

Stable support is targeted at ADS 2025 and later. ADS 2024 Update 2 is a preview target; ADS 2023 Update 2 through ADS 2024 Update 1 are experimental. Runtime capability probes, rather than version numbers alone, decide which features are actually available.

Remove the integration

ads-agent addon uninstall

The installer preserves unrelated ADS add-ons and creates timestamped XML backups before changing an existing configuration.

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the evidence-backed validation record.