Hey Protoboard community! We're kicking off the spring with a big one — v4.2 introduces Board Review, a brand-new way to validate your designs with live design-rule checks and threaded review comments right on the canvas. We've also added Board Sharing, smarter ProtoBot layout, and a refreshed BOM experience.

New Features

• Board Review: A dedicated Review tab replaces the old Validate Project form. See design-rule checks grouped by severity, add review comments with canvas navigation, and let ProtoBot help flag issues — all without leaving your board.

• Board Sharing Links: Share your boards with a single click. Hit the new Share button in the header to copy a shareable link anyone can use to view your board.

• Smarter ProtoBot Layouts: ProtoBot now places parts and routes harnesses much more effectively. Previous diagrams often needed manual cleanup after ProtoBot struggled with placement and routing — that's no longer the case. It plans better and draws cleaner, more appealing diagrams out of the box.

• Canvas Layout Tools: A new suite of tools for organizing your board manually. Auto-route harnesses to find clean paths, arrange selected parts into tidy grid layouts, resolve overlapping parts automatically, and tidy handles to redistribute them evenly per side without changing their orientation. Available from the right-click context menu, part inspector, and harness inspector — so you can clean up your board however you prefer to work.

Improvements

• Right-click context menu redesigned to match the workflows you'd expect from similar CAD apps

• Multi-select parts and harnesses with Ctrl+click or Shift+click for batch layout operations

• BOM refresh now walks you through changes before applying them, so you stay in control of what gets updated

• Supplier verification UX is clearer, with better handling of shared pricing data across parts

• Draft recovery gallery redesigned for faster access to your unsaved work on load

Bug Fixes

• Fixed BOM refresh timestamps not updating correctly after a refresh

• Fixed shared-price normalization issues when multiple parts reference the same supplier entry

What's Next

We're already heads-down on v4.3:

• Smarter ProtoBot — Continuing to improve ProtoBot's review and design assistance so it catches more issues and gives better suggestions

• Example Projects — Adding ready-made example boards to the main website so new users can explore real designs from day one

• Community Parts — Continuing to grow the parts library based on your requests — keep them coming!

• MCP Agent Bridge — Bring your OWN AI tools to Protoboard such as Claude Code, Codex, or Open Code (For advanced users 👨‍💻)

Have feedback on Board Review or Sharing? We'd love to hear it — drop us a note on Featurebase or in the discord.