Worked use cases

Reticle opens on a Start screen that is a first-time visitor’s whole first contact: it can open your own file, load an example chip, show recent files, and offer four worked scenarios. Each scenario drops you straight into a prepared starting point for a different part of the tool, so a capability is one click away rather than behind a blank document. You can skip to a blank editor at any time, and reach the Start screen again with Open on the toolbar.

The scenarios are built by the reticle_app::usecases module and the rest of the screen by reticle_app::startscreen. Everything is deterministic and self-contained: the SKY130 cell, its technology, and the example designs are compiled into the binary, so the Start screen behaves identically in the native application and in the browser, where there is no filesystem. The chooser itself is skipped for the deployed web replay build, which drops a public visitor straight into the theater instead.

Opening a file, examples, and recent files

Above the scenarios the Start screen offers three more ways in:

Open a file. Drag a layout file (.gds, .oas, .cif, .dxf, .mag, or a .zip/.gz of any) onto the window, from the Start screen or the editor, and it opens immediately. There is no filesystem behind the browser build, so drag-and-drop is the primary open path there; a dropped file’s bytes are read directly. Anything that cannot open, an unrecognized extension, an unreadable path, or bytes that are not the claimed format, is reported on the notification surface rather than failing in silence.
Load an example chip. A gallery of redistribution-cleared real designs, each built into the binary and opened through the same hardened path as any other file: a minimized real Tiny Tapeout 03 sample (a few SkyWater standard cells under a small top, Apache-2.0) and the single SKY130 inv_1 inverter cell. This is the no-install way to open a real chip on the web.
Recent files. Files you have opened are listed for one-click return. The list is display-only in the app; a persistence backend supplies it (on the web, from browser storage).

Every one of these routes through the same document-open seam and the same error surface, so opening a real design and never crashing is proven in one place. The file formats chapter covers the import path behind them.

1. Inspect a SKY130 cell

Loads a real SkyWater SKY130 high-density standard cell, the inv_1 inverter, from a bundled GDSII stream. The imported geometry is given the committed SKY130 technology, so its layers arrive named and colored (nwell, diff, poly, li1, met1, and their contacts and vias) rather than as anonymous layer numbers, and the physical layer stack comes along so the 3D view has real elevations to extrude.

From here you can:

Toggle layers in the layer manager to isolate the poly gate, the local interconnect, or metal 1.
Measure feature widths and spacings with the measure tool, reading values in both database units and microns.
Open the 3D layer-stack window to see the metals and contacts extruded to their process heights, and take a cross-section across the cell.

This is the fastest way to see that the importer handles a production layout, not just fixtures, and that the layer, measurement, and 3D machinery all read a real technology. See the file formats and rendering chapters for the underlying import and 3D-stack details.

2. Find and fix a violation

Opens a small layout that deliberately breaks a design rule. The top cell holds two metal-1 wires: one comfortably wider than the SKY130 minimum, and one only 80 nm wide, which violates the SKY130 m1.1 rule (minimum met1 width of 0.14 um, i.e. 140 nm). The SKY130 rule subset is carried in the document’s technology, so a check resolves the real periphery rules rather than a generic fallback.

The intended loop is:

Run the design-rule checker. The violation overlay marks the narrow wire and the error browser lists the m1.1 violation with its measured-versus-required width.
Zoom to the violation, select the offending wire, and widen it to at least 140 nm (for example with the productivity panel’s move-by-delta, or by editing its vertices).
Re-run the checker. With both wires meeting the minimum, the m1.1 violation clears.

This exercises the whole DRC path end to end on rules that mean something. See the design-rule checking chapter and the SKY130 rule coverage table for exactly which rules the subset checks.

3. Watch the agent work

Opens the replay theater and plays a recorded agent run. The transcript is the bundled model-free scripted run in which the agent places a clean met1 wire; it drives a real engine replay, with step, play, pause, and speed controls and a live narration feed alongside the canvas. Each verify step the run crosses feeds its design-rule results back to the overlay, so you watch the check clear as the run progresses.

Because the theater plays a compiled-in transcript, it needs no model, network, or API key, and it runs identically on native and in the browser. See the in-app agent UX chapter for the theater and narration, and the agent API and harness chapter for how such transcripts are produced.

4. Build with the new tools

Loads a small starter layout, sparse on purpose, so there is real geometry to work with but plenty of room to build. It seeds two short metal-1 wires and a metal-2 landing pad on the SKY130 metal layers.

It is a sandbox for the newer editing tools:

Draw additional shapes on the active layer, snapping to the existing geometry.
Boolean the two met1 wires together, or subtract one shape from another.
Array a shape into a repeated block to see hierarchy build up.
Via stack from met1 up to the met2 pad, generating the enclosure and cut geometry between the layers.

Every edit is undo-integrated, so you can experiment freely. See the drawing and vertex editing, boolean and transform operations, and productivity editing chapters for the tools themselves.