For agents · Rich Netlist

01 · One sentence

Give your agent this sentence. It does the rest

Claude Code, or any agent that can read a web page and write files: it reads llms.txt, learns where to download the skill package and where to unpack it, and then follows SKILL.md to read and write RNL.

Read https://rich-netlist.github.io/rnl/llms.txt, install the RNL skill it describes, and then help me with my RNL netlist.

llms.txt is the plain text meant for agents: how to install, which files the package has, how to check files, where the standard is. It is in English, at /rnl/llms.txt.

02 · Install

Unpack it where your agent keeps skills. You get rnl/SKILL.md

The skill is the folder rnl/. Claude Code keeps personal skills in ~/.claude/skills/, where every project sees them, and a project’s own in .claude/skills/; other agents have a directory of their own, as their documentation says. The commands below unpack the zip into Claude Code’s personal directory.

macOS · Linux · Git Bash

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills

curl -fL https://rich-netlist.github.io/rnl/skill/rnl-skill.zip -o /tmp/rnl-skill.zip

unzip -o /tmp/rnl-skill.zip -d ~/.claude/skills

Windows PowerShell

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$HOME\.claude\skills" | Out-Null

Invoke-WebRequest https://rich-netlist.github.io/rnl/skill/rnl-skill.zip -OutFile "$env:TEMP\rnl-skill.zip"

Expand-Archive -Force "$env:TEMP\rnl-skill.zip" "$HOME\.claude\skills"

By hand

rnl-skill.zip holds the folder rnl/ with all its files. Unpack it and put rnl/ where your agent keeps skills. The SHA-256 of the zip and of each file is in SHA256SUMS.txt, and the size and address of each file in manifest.json.

Without installing

An agent that cannot unpack or write files reads the plain text as it is: SKILL.md first, which points to the files under references/. Every file is under skill/rnl/, listed below.

From the repository

The skill’s source is skills/rnl/ in the repository: clone it and copy that folder, which comes to the same. The zip here is always built from the newest main.

03 · Package contents

A short guide, a generated reference, and validated examples

Every file reads as plain text. The reference is generated from the files of the standard packages, so it stays in step with them, and every SPICE or Spectre example in the package is read by rnl check in CI.

skill/rnl/The whole zip

Start hereSKILL.md
What RNL is, a complete example, the steps of the work, the rules that save time.
Short guide to the languagereferences/language.md
Everything needed to read and write an RNL 0.3 file: file structure, statements, objects and references, definitions, layout, wires, text and packages. The same guide also appears on the RNL 0.3 language standard page.
The standard packagesreferences/packages.md
Every package of the series 0.3, the definitions with their roles, the symbols with their pins, which symbol an instance gets by default, the sets, and what the alias package rnl-zh is. The gallery with the drawings is on the page of the packages.
Check and drawreferences/tools.md
How to use the prebuilt or source-built rnl command, the npm package @rich-netlist/runtime, the web viewer and the desktop viewer, with a complete checking script.
Example: structure onlyexamples/ota5t.sp
A five-transistor OTA in SPICE: the differential pair and the current mirror written, nothing placed; the same circuit in Spectre is examples/ota5t.scs.
Example: placed and wiredexamples/ota5t-placed.sp
The same circuit with every object placed, and the wires, ports, grounds and supplies written, which rnl render draws completely.
LicensesLICENSE.md
Which license each file is under, and the full texts (LICENSES/).

04 · Check and draw

Check what you write. Use the first tool you can run

All four tools share one core, so they read a file the same way. An agent can run the first two directly for checking and rendering; the two viewers are for interactive inspection (and an agent can also install and launch the desktop viewer when requested). Full details and commands are in references/tools.md.

`rnl`

Download the archive for Windows, Linux or macOS from the latest core release, or build it from source (Rust 1.85 or later): cargo build --release -p rnl-cli. rnl check FILE prints the diagnostics and exits 1 on errors; rnl render FILE -o DIR writes an SVG for each level. The most complete, and the one the CI uses.

npm

npm i @rich-netlist/runtime (Node 18 or later): the same core as WebAssembly, giving the diagnostics and an SVG for each level. It has the version of the rnl command and is released with the core.

Web viewer

For a person with a browser: rich-netlist.github.io/rnl/viewer/. Open a file, see the drawing and the problems; nothing is uploaded. An agent that cannot drive a browser asks the person to open the file there.

Desktop viewer

Windows 10 and 11, Linux x86_64 and macOS 13 or later: the download is on the page of the tools.

05 · Versions and license

It follows main, and each file says its license

VersionsThe skill follows language 0.3 (revision 2) and the standard packages of series 0.3. Both the language and the toolkit are still drafts, and versions 0.x make no promise of compatibility: 0.2 files use different names and are read with the series 0.2 packages.
Kept in stepThe zip and the files are written again whenever the site is published, so they are always the current main. The reference is generated from the package files, the guide is kept with the standard, and the examples are read by rnl check in CI.
LicenseSKILL.md and the tool notes are MIT, the guide to the language is CC-BY-4.0 (credit the source when you reuse it), and the reference to the packages and the examples are CC0-1.0. The package holds no code and no fonts. The terms are in LICENSE.md and LICENSES/ in the package.
Found a mistakeWhere the skill or the guide differs from the standard, the standard prevails; please report it on GitHub.