Blue Dog: Agentic Engineering for the Real World

The Blue Dog Story

Blue Dog started with a single problem: engineering teams don't own their design data anymore.

When you use Solidworks PDM, Windchill, or Teamcenter, you're signing up for a server farm, a change-request layer, and a vendor who moves at enterprise speed. You can't branch fast. You can't merge geometry. You can't see what actually changed in a drawing without a meeting. And if you want to switch CAD formats or move to a new vendor, your data is locked in.

But engineering data is just files. Engineers have had great version control for code since the 1990s. Why do CAD shops feel like 2005?

Blue Dog exists to open up that lock-in. We ship open source tools that let mechanical and design engineers use modern workflows: commit, branch, merge, diff, history, tags. We handle the hard parts (Git LFS for large files, conflict resolution for geometry, offline sync) and hide them behind Git's familiar interface.

Then, for teams that need collaboration, audit trails, web 3D review, and AI-powered design validation, we offer a Cloud platform. You can start free and open source. You can scale to a team or enterprise without losing your data or your flexibility.

That's the mission: open engineering to agentic-native design. Give every engineer a tool that's theirs, connected to the team, and ready for AI to actually help.

Jon Klinger

Jon is a mechanical engineer who spent 13 years at Caterpillar, John Deere, and Leica Microsystems designing and shipping CAD systems, precision assemblies, and the tooling that makes them. He hit the ceiling of what legacy PDM could do and decided to build better.

Along the way, he founded KITSCo Automation, an engineering consultancy that helps manufacturers adopt better workflows and automation. He teaches CAD at Design Engine and writes full-stack code. His background spans manufacturing floor to cloud platform.

He knows the pain because he lived it.

Open Source Plus Cloud

Blue Dog has two halves: open source tools and a SaaS platform. They work together, but you control which one you use.

OpenVault is the foundation: MIT-licensed, install via pip, use on your laptop or server. It's Git for engineering data. Commit CAD, track changes, merge branches, diff geometry. Works offline. Handles Git LFS for large files automatically. Open source under the MIT license with no vendor lock-in.

ToolCrib CLI is the companion: also MIT-licensed, also via pip. It's CAD operations from the command line. Format conversion (Solidworks to STEP, STEP to FreeCAD, etc.), visual 3D diff with color-coded geometry changes, batch automation, headless reads and exports. Built on Open CASCADE so it just works.

Tool Crib Cloud is where collaboration lives. Upload designs, browse them in a 3D web viewer, edit BOMs, set up approval workflows, manage team permissions, and get AI agents that run right there: tolerance checks, manufacturability analysis, design rule validation. You get a full audit log. Compliance teams can see every change.

GalaCAD is our AI-CAD layer for teams that want AI to shape the design process itself: AI-assisted sketching, professional-grade precision, faster iteration, real-time design validation.

You can use the open source tools alone. You can layer in Cloud when your team grows or you need web collaboration. You can add AI agents when you're ready. Each layer adds capability on its own terms, and your data stays portable throughout.