ProductFlo

ProductFlo 3x Faster Product Development at 1/10th the Cost with ProductFlo.io

06/01/2026

Three letters that quietly run the entire hardware design review: F, F, F.
Form. Fit. Function.
It's how every meaningful engineering change gets classified, and most people outside hardware have never heard of it.

- **Form**: did the design of the physical shape, size, or appearance change?
- **Fit**: did the design of how the part connects or assembles with other parts change?
- **Function**: did what the part actually *does* change?

Why does this matter?
Because the answer determines how much pain a change causes.
A pure cosmetic tweak (form only) might need a quick sign-off.
A change that touches fit or function can ripple through your tooling, your suppliers, your certifications, and your other parts, and if you don't catch that ripple, you find out on the assembly line.

This is the heart of an EC: an Engineering Change Order. It's the paperwork that exists because, in hardware, changing one thing changes other things, and someone has to track that.

If you build physical products, how does your team handle change orders today? Spreadsheet? PLM? Hope?

PS: I tend not to edit while I type, so please excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.

: I am building the most important tools in engineering. Check ProductFlo.io & Haitch.diy

05/29/2026

"Fully typed API for hardware..." What the heck does it mean?
Here's what it actually means.
If you are familiar with software development, especially if you develop a full-stack JavaScript application using Typescript, you want your codebase to be fully typed from backend to frontend, ensuring that changes in your API don't silently break your UI or even more empower your IDE with better autocomplete since the type helps the IDE know that this specific function takes a number, not a string. If you pass the wrong thing, it yells at you before it even compiles.

That single idea is why AI is so good at software development, and also why a single senior full-stack software developer can also move fast without everything constantly breaking.

Hardware has almost none of this, and there is no concept of a full-stack hardware developer.
Look, in hardware:
- schematic and board design lives in ECAD and are exported as PDF.
- mechanical design lives in MCAD and is exported as a binary blob.
- Firmware is in an embedded IDE and exported as compile binary.
None of them are typed!

Nothing checks that the connector in your schematic matches the footprint in your CAD matches the part in your BOM. So the check happens during design revision, if you are lucky, or later when you try to assemble a prototype, on a manufacturing line, or in a field failure.

A typed API for hardware means every artefact (mechanical, electrical, firmware, BOM) becomes structured, validated, and queryable.
The system can catch the mismatch before you build anything.

That's it. That's the whole thesis.
We're trying to give hardware the thing that made software fast: types that catch your mistakes early instead of expensively.

What's the most expensive "we found out too late" mistake you've shipped?

PS: I tend not to edit while I type, so please excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.

: I am building the most important tools in engineering. Check ProductFlo.io & Haitch.diy

05/27/2026

I saw someone prompt Haitch two days ago to design "an XYZ gantry system."
The outputs were... not close at all to what was expected.
There are so many questions that need to be answered before starting any CAD design.
- What stage of development are you targeting (DIY, Prototype, Mass production)?
- What's the intended use case (CNC, Pick and place, Medical, ...)?
- What are the ranges for each axis, especially the Z axis?
- Are you aiming for an electric, pneumatic, or hydraulic system?
- How will the machine look?
And many more questions...

Without these, you are just playing "Russian roulette"
One could give you the mechanical part list and all the fasteners and miss all the electronic parts.
Another one could focus on the motor spec and dimensioning.

I still don't know what is the best flow or UX to let the user answer all of the questions, but this is definitely one of the most complicated stuff that I have to resolve for Haitch.
For now, it seems like it will be a graph. A graph questions the user and builds as the agent progresses through the solution space.

The value isn't in selecting the parts or designing the components. It's in knowing the reason why behind every design decision and the impact they have on each other.
I'll keep you posted as I move through this challenge.
Curious to know how you would approach this.

PS: I tend not to edit while I type, so please excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.

: I am building the most important tools in engineering. Check ProductFlo.io & Haitch.diy

05/25/2026

Hardware is roughly 4 years behind software.
Now, everyone in hardware is racing to build a CAD copilot, like it's June 2022
Most of us are building at the wrong layer again.
A copilot that autocompletes geometry, builds parts, and picks components. It's useful, has good features, demos well, creates awareness, but within 18 months, every CAD vendor will ship one for free.
This is just a countdown.

The hard problem was never "draw the part faster." As we have seen in software, it's the entire experience that needs to change from Copilot to Codex.
The entire experience will have to change.
The winner will need to have the balls to go against and break old habits.
Think Cursor, Devin, Conductor.

The model needs to be comfortable with the entire hardware stack, from mechanical files, schematics, firmware, and your BOM, so that it understands the connections between each one of them.
Imagine changing a connector footprint and noticing every downstream update.
Currently, knowledge resides in the tools of every discipline or in the heads of individual engineers.

We need a way to make each artefact addressable and understandable by the agent.
Imagine a typed, queryable layer underneath each hardware product that makes everything connected.

Everyone's selling the autocomplete.
But this is just a temporary patch to a deeper problem.
What layer do you think the real value lives in?


PS: I tend not to edit while I type, so please excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.

05/08/2026

The hidden cost of hardware development is 'File translation'.

How many hours does your mechanical engineer spend exporting STEP files, taking screenshots, and making slide decks just so the non-CAD people can see what's going on?

Every time a design changes, that manual translation process starts over.
It is a massive waste of high-value engineering time.

ProductFlo fixes this. We built a native 3D viewer right into the version control workflow.
When a new revision is committed, anyone on the team—procurement, marketing, management—can view it, spin it, and comment on it directly in the browser. No CAD license required.

Let your engineers engineer. Let ProductFlo handle the translation. productflo.io

05/06/2026

Most hardware delays aren't caused by engineering failures. They are caused by information asymmetry.

The electrical engineer is working off a 3-day-old STEP file.
The manufacturer is quoting a BOM that doesn't include yesterday's ECO.
The project manager is updating a Gantt chart that reflects a reality that no longer exists.

When you ask a hardware team 'what is the current state of the product?', and they have to check 4 different systems to answer you... you are bleeding time.

ProductFlo gives hardware teams a single source of truth. Not by forcing everyone to use the same CAD tool, but by versioning the outputs and making them accessible to the entire team.

Stop managing regret. Start managing reality. productflo.io

The hardest part of building a physical product at scale isn't the engineering.It's the alignment between engineering di...
05/04/2026

The hardest part of building a physical product at scale isn't the engineering.
It's the alignment between engineering disciplines!

Iterate on design and human interface.
Boot up CAD design (mechanical, electrical, electronics).
Export to STEP, Ge**er, CMF, Firmware, Push to git
Realise it doesn't fit.
Back to CAD, drawing, debugs, assemble, test again.
Research new solutions, materials, and suppliers.
Check lead times. Adjust quantities.
Send to the manufacturer.
Wait for the quote.

Each step requires context switching into a different tool with a different mental model.
What if we do less switching and more building?
https://productflo.io

Every product starts with a purpose.Ours? To make hardware design as fast, collaborative, and creative as software.Explo...
10/17/2025

Every product starts with a purpose.
Ours? To make hardware design as fast, collaborative, and creative as software.

Explore the story behind ProductFlo in our Manifesto.
👉 https://productflo.io/manifesto

Ever tried giving design feedback through screenshots and endless email threads?We’ve been there.Now you can comment dir...
10/15/2025

Ever tried giving design feedback through screenshots and endless email threads?
We’ve been there.

Now you can comment directly in context - right inside your CAD file.
No more chaos. Just collaboration that makes sense.

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