Cut-List Optimizer: Claude Skill for Woodworkers

Woodworking and DIY projects often suffer from expensive material waste and layout errors. Hand-calculating how to fit parts onto plywood sheets or lumber boards is prone to miscounting, ignoring saw blade thickness, or violating grain direction. This skill eliminates the guesswork by running a dedicated 2D packing optimizer to generate precise, verified cut lists. ## What it does - **Optimizes material yield** by calculating the most efficient way to fit parts onto sheet goods and linear boards. - **Accounts for kerf** by factoring in the specific width of the saw blade to ensure final parts aren't undersized. - **Respects grain direction** for veneered or solid wood parts while allowing rotation on hidden components to save money. - **Generates shopping lists** with total project costs based on current stock prices and available sheet sizes. - **Produces cut diagrams** that provide a step-by-step sequence for table saw or track saw operations. ## How it works 1. **Part ingestion** where you provide dimensions for your project, either as a raw list or by describing the furniture piece. 2. **Stock definition** including sheet sizes, lumber lengths, prices, and any shop scrap you want to prioritize. 3. **Execution** of the optimization script which runs a heuristic search to find the lowest-cost layout. 4. **Verification** of every cut to ensure no overlaps, no off-sheet placements, and valid guillotine-cut sequences. ## Frameworks & tools The skill utilizes a custom Python-based 2D packing solver that executes locally. It processes standard JSON project schemas and outputs HTML shop sheets with visual diagrams. ## Why this beats prompting it yourself LLMs frequently fail at spatial reasoning and 2D geometry, often "hallucinating" layouts where parts overlap or ignore the saw's kerf. This skill uses a deterministic script to verify every single coordinate, ensuring the plan you take to the shop is physically possible and mathematically efficient. ## Use cases - **Cabinetry and built-ins** to calculate exactly how many 4x8 plywood sheets are required for carcasses and doors. - **Decking and framing** to minimize offcuts when buying dimensional lumber in various lengths. - **Cost estimation** for client bids by comparing different material grades and sheet sizes. - **Scrap management** to integrate existing workshop offcuts into new projects before buying new stock. ## Known limitations Supports rectangular parts only; curved or complex shapes must be entered as their bounding boxes. Layouts are optimized for guillotine cuts (edge-to-edge) rather than CNC nesting patterns.