AI Employees that run your silicon program, architecture to tape-out.
Tymeline sees trouble coming on every commitment your date depends on, and clears it while it is still small. Your date does not move.
- A RTL freeze Ada · Design
- N Supplier IP Noor · Supplier
- K Verification Kai · Verification
- R Timing closure Ravi · Physical
- L Firmware Lena · Firmware
Nothing is waiting for you.
NNoor· Supplier EmployeeSeenSupplier IP, 4 weeks late
Fix readyRun timing in parallel
ActingRun timing in parallel
Approvedby VP Engineering · signed by Noor TID-7F3A
Doneinside the envelope · signed by Noor TID-7F3A
RememberedSupplier IP needs four weeks of margin. The next program is planned with it.
Five AI Employees, each with a job and an identity, hold five commitments to one tape-out date.
The AI arriving on chip programs does engineering. Tymeline runs the program.
Each of these does real work in its own domain, and none of them holds your date. Here is what a program lead actually gets from each, from their own descriptions.
| Compared with | TymelineAI Employees that run the program | EDA vendor's super agentsfront end to signoff, inside its own tools | EDA vendor's agent platformlong-running agents, inside its own flow | PLM suite with a copilotproduct data, BOMs and changes | RTL agent start-upwrites and verifies RTL in the editor | Frontier-model agent platformsgeneral-purpose agents you build and run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Employees, not AI agentsWho is on the program, and who answers for it | Responsible for the date, not for a task. On the program 24×7 with a name, an identity, a scope you set and a signed record of every action. | Invoked per task, inside the tool | Invoked per objective, on the platform | A copilot that answers questions | An agent in your editor | Agents you build, run and govern yourself |
| Will the tape-out date hold?The only question the board asks | Held. That is the one thing it is there to do. | Not its concern | Not its concern | Tracked, if someone types it in | Not its concern | Whatever you build it to watch |
| Who sees the slip the hour it starts?A supplier email, a fab portal, a flattening coverage curve | Tymeline. It reads supplier email, the fab portal, PLM, the coverage curve and the timing run directly, every hour. | Only inside its own flow | Only inside its own flow | Only what people enter | Only in the RTL | Only what you connect, through connectors you build |
| What happens in the next hour?Where most of a slip is actually lost | Every dependent team is re-planned the same hour. The approver gets a quantified choice, not a problem. | Fixes its own task | Fixes its own task | Fixes the RTL | Whatever you build it to do | |
| Self-correcting, self-learningDoes it fix the program, and does it learn from the fix? | Yes. When a commitment moves, the plan corrects itself the same hour. Every outcome feeds Kendrel, so the next fix is found sooner. Built on HyperOrg's self-correcting execution loops. | Optimises within the flow; learns on the vendor's models | Closed loop within the flow | Re-runs tests until they pass | Loops you build | |
| Hybrid or fully autonomous?Your call, per program | Either. Inside an authority envelope you set, with consequential decisions staying with named people. | Autonomous inside the flow, by its own account | Objectives and constraints set by engineers | Works alongside you | Approval flows you build | |
| Can you audit it in a year?Who did what, on whose authority | Yes. Tymeline ID signs every action, encrypted and anchored, readable only by its source. | Tool logs | Governance on the platform | Audit trail on product changes | Traces and logs, if you keep them | |
| Does it get better with every program?The lesson from the last program, applied to the next | Yes. It remembers what moved, what fixed it and who approved. The next program is planned with it. | Models trained on its own flows | Memory on the platform | Memory, if you build it | ||
| The whole program, or one vendor's flow?Both EDA flows, Jira, source control, PLM, ERP, the test floor, the fab | The whole program. It reads every tool, and it is not sold by any of them. | Its own tools | Its own tools | PLM, with integrations | Your simulators | Any tool, once you connect it |
| Does it work while the team sleeps?Overnight is a third of the schedule | Yes. 24×7, and fewer repeated runs because it remembers. | On the tasks it is given | On the tasks it is given | On the tasks it is given | Long-running, when you run it | |
| Where can it run?Where your data is allowed to be | SaaS, your own VPC, or sealed inside the building on the Patrick appliance. Your data stays where you say. | On-premise and cloud flows | On-premise, cloud, or with a frontier model | On-premise or cloud | Not published | Cloud, or private cloud |
| What does it cost to add a program?The pricing model decides who gets to use it | One fee per program. Never per seat, so everyone on the program is in. | Tool licences | Tool licences | Per seat | Not published | Per token, plus what you build |
If you want engineering done faster inside one tool, buy them. If you want the date held across all of them, add Tymeline. Most companies end up with both.
Each column is taken from the vendor's own public descriptions, November 2026. They are good at what they do; Tymeline sits above them and reads them. Nothing is replaced.
The program as it is. Not as it was reported.
A status report is what people remembered to type, a week ago. Tymeline reads the regression runs, the timing reports, the tickets, the test datalogs and the supplier's email, and holds every commitment against its evidence. A milestone isn't done because someone said so. It's done when the evidence says so.
Every commitment, held to one date.
The record
Every commitment, who owns it — human or agent — when it was promised, and whether it is true right now. Pulled from the tools, not from status slides.
The alarm
The drift the hour it starts, with what it would break downstream: verification closing late, firmware blocked, sample date at risk. Owners know while it can still be fixed, not at the review.
The hands
AI Employees chase the owner, propose the re-plan, update downstream and draft the customer note — inside a fence you set. Humans approve what's outside it.
The memory
Not an event log. A causal record: what drifted, why, what was done about it, who approved it, and whether it worked. A post-mortem written in real time — and the next program starts with it.
Authority is earned, one action at a time.
You decide what Tymeline may do on its own, what needs a named approver, and what it may never do. It starts by watching.
- Observe
It reconciles your tools and shows the program as it is. People do everything else.
- Diagnose
It names the cause of every drift, with the evidence.
- Recommend
It proposes the least-cost repair, with the impact quantified. You approve or reject each one.
- Act
It carries out the kinds of action you've approved — chase an owner, re-sequence a sprint, request evidence — and sends you the receipt.
The fence is set per program and per kind of action. Let it chase evidence on its own and still approve every staffing change. No AI Employee approves a tape-out gate. Ever.
Four kinds of silicon program. One layer that runs them all.
The vocabulary differs between a tape-out, a beta tool and a customer qual. The failure mode is the same: a date nobody could see slipping.
Chip programs
Spec to tape-out to samples to qual. The alarm: a coverage slope, a late ECO, an IP vendor, a shuttle move.
Firmware & software programs
Firmware ready when the silicon is. The alarm: the silicon date moved and the firmware plan didn't.
Equipment & tool programs
Hardware, process, firmware and software landing together at the beta tool. The alarm: a long-lead part, a chamber supplier, software behind hardware.
Qualification & ramp programs
Every customer qual held to the customer's sign-off date. The alarm: a missed milestone the customer hasn't heard about yet.
A named teammate in your program. Not a chatbot.
A chat session starts from zero every time. An AI Employee has been in the program since kickoff, and it does real work: triaging failures, isolating flaky tests, assembling review packets, chasing owners, drafting the re-plan.
- AriaRTL
- VelaVerification
- SoraFirmware & integration
- PhinPhysical design
- OrinProgram operations
What changes when the date holds.
The schedule stops moving
Drift is caught while it can still be fixed, so the date — and the revenue behind it — stays where you committed it.
The expensive failures don't happen
A re-spin, a missed insertion window, a lost qual: each starts as a small change somebody could have seen.
Engineers get their time back
Not only from status meetings. The triage, the chasing and the re-planning are done for them.
Every program starts smarter
What slipped and what fixed it is kept, so the next program is warned when the pattern returns.
Runs where your program has to.
Tymeline Cloud
Live in about two weeks.
Your VPC
Your network, your keys. Two to three weeks.
Patrick
A sealed appliance inside your walls. Four to six weeks.
Every AI Employee action is identity-anchored, scope-bounded and signed. Your program data is never used to train a model that leaves your tenant.