Verdi Bridge

Getting started · Tool reference · Architecture · 中文

Give your RTL debugging agent eyes on the waveform

Connect your AI agent to live Synopsys Verdi. Let it find signals, inspect transitions, move through simulation time, and open the driving RTL—all in the same GUI you use to debug.

“Add the FIFO read/write pointers, go 20 cycles before the error, and investigate why full stayed high.”

“When did BVALID drop? Show the handshake signals and the code that drives it.”

Verdi Bridge turns those requests into observations from your simulation and visible actions in nWave and nTrace. The agent reasons; the bridge observes. Eighteen typed MCP tools work locally or over SSH with your existing Verdi setup.

Video walkthrough

Ask an agent to investigate a bug, then watch it choose signals, inspect live waveforms and navigate RTL. A 1m38s silent demo: an English prompt and original English agent replies beside synchronized Verdi capture. This is a separate English-language run, not a translation. Tool calls are selected by the agent, not a replay script.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b041c1bd-4be5-4040-b281-2f15001b1e35

English video · 中文视频

How this was recorded · Installation tutorial

Quick start

pip install verdi-bridge

Or run without a checkout using uv:

uvx verdi-bridge tcl-path

This prints the bundled Tcl adapter path. Load it in Verdi and connect your MCP client, then use uvx verdi-bridge serve as the stdio server. A licensed Verdi installation is required. Client: Python 3.11+; remote host: Python 3.6+ and Verdi's Tcl 8.6. No vendor software is bundled.

What you can do

Workflow	Tools
Find and display signals	find_signals, browse_scope, add_signals
Navigate an error window	set_cursor, set_time_window, jump_before_error
Inspect actual waveform values	find_transitions, get_value_changes, sample_signals
Summarize long windows	count_changes, sample_on_clock
Discover error times and clocks	read_log, measure_clock
Follow drivers into RTL	trace_driver, read_source, read_source_file, goto_source

Waveform queries preserve X/Z values. Long windows on large FSDBs can run through Verdi's NPI reader outside the GUI, so the GUI stays responsive. Time arguments carry explicit units. The same interface works with different RTL designs; no FIFO-specific logic is built into the bridge. See the Python and CLI examples.

See it in a real debugging session

Tested with UART TX, AXI-Lite, FIFO and arbiter RTL in licensed VCS/Verdi sessions. The agent can put relevant signals on screen, inspect their changes, and navigate to source while you follow along.

Real RTL examples · Blind debugging trial · Validation results and limitations

Project status

Experimental v0.3.3. Live checks used Verdi T-2022.06-SP2-1 on Linux, including the SSH, session and large-FSDB changes of v0.3.2–v0.3.3 (up to a 2.7 GB FSDB). New-session startup is verified; attachment to an arbitrary existing GUI is not yet separately validated. The bridge does not automatically compile, edit or repair RTL.

Contributing · Trust boundary · Validation limits · Report an issue

Inspired by the agent-to-EDA-tool workflow of virtuoso-bridge-lite. This is an independent implementation. MIT licensed; see third-party notices. Not affiliated with Synopsys. Verdi is a Synopsys trademark.