Hey Protoboard community! We're thrilled to announce Alpha v4.0 — our largest update since launch. The headline feature is Protobot, an AI agent that lives right on your canvas and helps you design boards through conversation.

This release also introduces vector-powered part search, Pro subscriptions, and dozens of quality-of-life improvements across the board editor.

Also, the alpha is NO LONGER CLOSED. You are officially invited to use the app as an Open Alpha Tester. Thank you to our testers this far that have helped us reach this critical milestone!

Try it out here → https://alpha.protoboard.xyz

New Features

• Protobot AI Agent: An integrated AI assistant that can search and add parts, configure connections, plan board architecture, and generate concept images — all from a chat panel on the canvas. Protobot is board-aware, meaning it sees your current design and can make changes in context.

• Web-Powered Part Discovery: Protobot can search the web for real-world parts, datasheets, and specifications — so you're not limited to what's already in the library.

• Vector Part Search: The parts library now uses semantic search. Type a natural-language description and get relevant matches, even if you don't know the exact part name.

• Pro Subscriptions: Protoboard Pro is here at $10/month — unlocking private projects, a private parts library, 1,000 Wh/month of Protobot energy, and a Developer Discord role. https://protoboard.xyz/pricing to get the most out of Protobot.

• Copy & Paste: Select parts, connections, and groups on the canvas and duplicate them with Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V.

• Autosave Draft Recovery: Board changes are now continuously backed up locally. If your browser closes unexpectedly, your work is recovered automatically on next load.

Improvements

• Upgraded our email system — you'll now receive emails for important account updates, subscription changes, and more

• Simplified sign-up — removed the activation code requirement for new accounts

• Improved UI contrast and theme handling across the app

Bug Fixes

• Fixed harness and note edges disappearing after certain operations

• Fixed annotation edge visual bugs

• Fixed zoom level not persisting when switching between BOM and Canvas views

• Fixed copy/paste reliability in certain edge cases

• Fixed resource allocation options in the part inspector

What's Next

We're already working on Alpha v4.1, targeted for later this month. Here's what's coming:

• Part library overhaul — thumbnail images on every part card, richer metadata, taxonomy-based category browsing, and relevance-based sorting so you find parts faster

• Visual polish — refined annotation edges, improved canvas styling, and a Tailwind 4 upgrade for a cleaner look throughout the app

• Cloud projects — transitioning boards from local-only to cloud storage, with public share links so you can send your designs to anyone

Upgrade to Pro in the settings tab of the alpha app to get the most out of Protobot, and as always — we'd love to hear your feedback!