Photonics Designs

Private repository containing all PIC design work: GDSFactory scripts, Jupyter notebooks, simulation results, plots, and reports.

This repo is the companion to photonics-workstation, which provides the shared infrastructure (setup, tools, Claude AI slash commands). The two repos must be cloned side by side for the CLAUDE.md import to work.

Prerequisites

The photonics-workstation template must be cloned at ../photonics-workstation/ relative to this repo — i.e. both repos share the same parent directory:

~/Desktop/
├── photonics-workstation/   ← infrastructure template (must exist here)
└── photonics-designs/       ← this repo

If you haven't set up the workstation yet, do that first:

git clone git@github.com:pic-asso/photonics-workstation.git ~/Desktop/photonics-workstation
cd ~/Desktop/photonics-workstation
chmod +x setup.sh && ./setup.sh && source ~/.bashrc
conda env create -f environment.yml
tidy3d configure

Cloning this repo

git clone git@github.com:<your-org>/photonics-designs.git ~/Desktop/photonics-designs

That's it. All Claude AI behavioural rules (DRC discipline, simulation cost gates, NDA file guards) are inherited automatically from photonics-workstation/CLAUDE.md via the one-line import in CLAUDE.md. No extra config needed.

Opening Claude Code

Always open Claude Code from this directory, not from photonics-workstation/:

cd ~/Desktop/photonics-designs
claude

All /slash-commands are globally installed by setup.sh and will be available here.

Repository Structure

photonics-designs/
│
├── CLAUDE.md                   # Imports rules from ../photonics-workstation/CLAUDE.md
│
├── designs/                    # GDSFactory component scripts and extracted parameters (tracked)
│   └── [component_name]/
│       ├── [component_name].py
│       └── params_[ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.json
│
├── notebooks/                  # Jupyter design notebooks (tracked)
│
├── layout/                     # GDS/OAS layouts (git-ignored — binary)
│   └── [component_name]/
│       └── [ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.gds
│
├── pdk-info/                   # Foundry PDK documents (git-ignored — NDA)
├── drc-rules/                  # Extracted YAML rule decks (git-ignored — NDA)
├── tapeout/                    # MPW submission packages (git-ignored — NDA)
│
└── analysis/
    ├── simulation/             # Raw simulation outputs (git-ignored — large binary)
    │   └── [component_name]/
    ├── plots/                  # Generated figures — PNG/PDF (tracked)
    │   └── [component_name]/
    └── reports/                # KPI CSVs, corner results, MD/LaTeX reports (tracked)
        └── [component_name]/

Naming conventions

All outputs use [component_name] (snake_case) subfolders so /generate-report can discover every artefact with a single glob per type.

Output type	Path	Naming pattern
Design scripts	designs/[component_name]/	[component_name].py
Extracted parameters	designs/[component_name]/	params_[ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.json
GDS layouts	layout/[component_name]/	[ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.gds
DRC markers	layout/[component_name]/	[ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.lyrdb
Raw sim data	analysis/simulation/[component_name]/	sim_[ComponentName]_[Timestamp].[ext]
Plots	analysis/plots/[component_name]/	plot_[ComponentName]_[Timestamp].png
KPI / corner CSVs	analysis/reports/[component_name]/	[type]_[ComponentName]_[Timestamp].csv
Reports (MD + TeX)	analysis/reports/[component_name]/	report_[ComponentName]_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.{md,tex}

What is and isn't tracked

Path	Tracked	Reason
designs/	Yes	Core IP — design scripts
notebooks/	Yes	Exploration and analysis
analysis/plots/	Yes	Publication figures
analysis/reports/	Yes	KPI tables and executive reports
layout/	No	Binary GDS/OAS files
analysis/simulation/	No	Large HDF5/NumPy archives
pdk-info/	No	NDA — foundry PDK
drc-rules/	No	NDA — derived from foundry PDF
tapeout/	No	NDA — MPW submission

Updating the workstation

When the template gets improvements (new slash commands, updated utility scripts):

cd ~/Desktop/photonics-workstation
git pull && ./setup.sh

No action needed here — the CLAUDE.md import resolves live and the new commands are immediately available.