It’s already running in Hawthorne, CA

For stuff like this, definitely. It’s already exciting. Claude et al are surprisingly competent with real hardware. I’ve also had good success debugging basic issues with micros - not via the debugger, but giving datasheet and written analysis. I’m sure it could do things like capture from a connected oscilloscope (Salaeae have an MCP integration for their logic tools). Also for SPICE which I never bother with because the tools always felt stuck in the 90s, but having some serious automated analog review would be nice. I’m really excited to play with peripherals like the RP2040 or Beaglebone real time logic blocks, or improving/adding real USB support instead of USB serial.

For circuits I would trust a netlist or DRC/ERC review, checking a design against reference circuit values, probably not placement as that tends to be guided straight from a datasheet where it makes a difference and I like the artistic side of it.

that's FPGA firmware isn't it?

Digital silicon design is fairly simple in principle. It's hard because there are billions of transistors to route

PCB design on the other hand more often then not has outside constrains like mechanical, thermal an RF design

I think the amount of reuse is a big difference. IC tools build on characterized cells with a lot of the rules already encoded. With PCBs, even when you're reusing a reference circuit, you're often manually carrying over the constraints and figuring out which layout decisions mattered. A lot of the engineering gets repeated rather than traveling with the design. That's something we're trying to improve with atopile.