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 intended PyPI user path is four commands:

pipx install ads-agent-bridge
ads-agent doctor
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. Setup also installs the portable ads-kb-docs Codex skill when its target directory is free and starts private full-text documentation enrichment in the background.

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 and Markdown caches 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 doctor
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.

To leave Codex skills unchanged or postpone full-text conversion:

ads-agent setup --skip-skill --no-background-docs

Five public examples

List the supported examples and their prerequisites before running one:

ads-agent --pretty examples list

The initial catalog is intentionally small:

1. ADS installation discovery and explicit version selection;
2. a headless minimal-AC workspace, simulation, and dataset readback;
3. read-only live DE workspace context;
4. bounded DDS dataset readback into a new native DDS file;
5. a fixed read-only AEL workspace call demonstrating the hybrid boundary.

Every runner emits JSON, names its required state, and returns nonzero when its acceptance gate is not met. See the example guide for exact commands and stop rules.

Portable Docs Skill

setup installs the ads-kb-docs skill without replacing an existing skill. It can also be managed explicitly:

ads-agent skill status docs
ads-agent skill install docs
ads-agent skill uninstall docs

The fast index is immediately queryable. Full enrichment converts installed HTML into private per-version Markdown and updates the local SQLite index:

ads-agent docs ensure
ads-agent docs build --background
ads-agent docs status

Use --ads INSTANCE_ID on any docs command to bind the result to a non-default installation. No ADS version is hard-coded into the skill.

Current commands

ads-agent doctor [--ads-root PATH] [--search-root PATH] [--no-ping]
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 build [--ads INSTANCE_ID] [--background]
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 examples list
ads-agent examples show NAME
ads-agent examples run NAME [--ads INSTANCE_ID] [--slot SLOT]
ads-agent skill status|install|uninstall docs
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.