Aurélio Embroidery

"From artisans to AI. The first art of the Omniscient Replica."

Aurélio Embroidery is the embroidery digitizing, machine control, and universal vendor bridge for the Portugal Futurista platform. It plugs into Aurélio Web IDE and Aurélio Desktop IDE, giving every artisan the power to draw, digitize, and "print" embroidery designs — as easily as 3D printing.

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The Grand Dream

My family has a long history of textile creation. I grew up surrounded by fabrics, threads, sewing machines, and the slow, beautiful craft of turning raw material into adorned cloth. This project is a love letter to that heritage.

The dream is simple: small embroidery machines that work like a CNC for thread. You draw or create something, press "print," and the machine stitches it out. No $2,000 software. No proprietary dongles. No vendor lock-in. Just art → thread → fabric.

But the dream is bigger than convenience. It's about preserving and teaching the old ways — the ofícios — while giving them new life through technology. Imagine Guitar Hero, but for learning embroidery. A platform that guides your hands through the motions of satin stitch, chain stitch, cross stitch, until muscle memory takes over and you're no longer following lights on a screen — you're creating.

This is the start of the Omniscient Replica: the first real art, for artists and from artisans.

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What This Repo Contains

Path	What
README.md	You are here — vision, philosophy, roadmap
AGENTS.md	Agent guide — how AI agents should work in this repo
vendor-registry/	Universal machine database — every vendor, every format, every hack
mcp/	MCP server — Aurélio's embroidery bridge (FastMCP)
plugins/desktop/	Aurélio Desktop IDE embroidery plugin
plugins/web/	Aurélio Web IDE embroidery plugin
hardware/universal-bridge/	ESP32/RPi universal floppy emulator design
hw/flashfloppy/	FlashFloppy — the #1 floppy emulator firmware
lib/pyembroidery/	pyembroidery — Python lib: 46 read, 20 write formats
lib/libembroidery/	libembroidery — C library: 45+ formats, CLI tool
lib/inkstitch/	Ink/Stitch — full Inkscape-based digitizing platform
lib/embroidermodder/	Embroidermodder 2 — Qt GUI for editing embroidery files

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Why These Projects Matter

FlashFloppy — the universal key

Embroidery machines from the 1990s-2010s read designs from floppy disks. FlashFloppy lets you replace that floppy drive with a USB stick. Drop a Gotek ($25) into any Tajima, Barudan, Brother, Melco, or Toyota machine, flash this firmware, and you have a modern machine that reads designs from USB. This is the hardware hack that unlocks the entire ecosystem.

pyembroidery — the universal translator

Reads 46 embroidery formats, writes 20. Every brand, every variant. This is the Rosetta Stone that lets Aurélio speak to any machine ever made. If a format exists, pyembroidery can read it, convert it, and write it.

libembroidery — the embedded engine

A single C file you drop into any project. 45+ formats, command-line tool (sew), permissive license. This is what runs on the ESP32 inside the universal bridge.

Ink/Stitch — the free digitizer

The ONLY open-source alternative to Wilcom EmbroideryStudio. Full Inkscape integration: draw in SVG, export to PES/DST/EXP/JEF/VP3. Satin stitch, fill stitch, lettering, auto-column. This is the design tool every artisan deserves.

Embroidermodder 2 — the free editor

A Qt-based GUI for viewing, editing, and converting embroidery files. Still in alpha, but the vision is complete: a free, cross-platform embroidery editor.

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The Universal Bridge

The missing piece — the thing we're building here — is the Universal Embroidery Machine Bridge: a $15 ESP32-S3 that emulates a floppy drive, serves designs over WiFi, and speaks every embroidery format through libembroidery.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   Aurélio IDE / MCP                       │
│   (draw → digitize → convert → send)                     │
└──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
                       │
┌──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┐
│              Universal Embroidery Bridge                   │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  │
│  │ Gotek + FF   │  │ FlashAir SD  │  │ ESP32 Bridge    │  │
│  │ (floppy bay) │  │ (card slot)  │  │ (direct GPIO)   │  │
│  └─────────────┘  └──────────────┘  └─────────────────┘  │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │              Machine Vendor Registry                  │ │
│  │  tajima → dst, floppy, ibmpc, jc-s1                  │ │
│  │  brother → pes, floppy_or_card, cf-adapter           │ │
│  │  barudan → dst, floppy, ibmpc, jc-s1                 │ │
│  │  janome → jef, floppy_or_cf, usb-cable               │ │
│  │  bernina → art, usb_stick, wifi_sd                   │ │
│  │  pfaff → vp3, floppy, ibmpc, jc-s1                   │ │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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Roadmap

Phase 1 — Foundation (now)

• Repository created, vision documented
• Key submodules added (FlashFloppy, pyembroidery, libembroidery, Ink/Stitch)
• Vendor registry populated with all known machines
• MCP server skeleton (FastMCP): convert formats, list machines, preview stitches

Phase 2 — The Bridge

• ESP32 universal floppy emulator firmware (based on FlashFloppy logic)
• WiFi design upload (drag & drop PES/DST → machine)
• Aurélio Desktop IDE plugin: embroidery panel with live preview
• Aurélio Web IDE plugin: same, in the browser

Phase 3 — The Art

• Auto-digitizing pipeline (GPU-accelerated: raster/vector → stitches)
• 4× 8GB VRAM GPU cluster for batch digitizing
• "Guitar Hero for embroidery" — interactive learning mode
• Integration with the full Omniscient Replica fleet

Phase 4 — The Movement

• Open hardware reference design published
• Community-contributed machine profiles
• Teaching curriculum (traditional Portuguese embroidery techniques)

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Philosophy

This project exists because the tools of creation should belong to the creators.

Wilcom costs $2,000+. Pulse costs $3,000+. The machines are locked to Windows 95 floppy drives and proprietary dongles. The artisans who keep textile traditions alive are locked out by software they can't afford and hardware they can't connect to.

We're breaking that open.

Every line of code in this repo is free. Every machine profile is community-owned. Every design you make is yours. The GPUs in our lab (4× 8GB when the fleet is back online) will accelerate the hard parts — auto-digitizing, stitch simulation, preview rendering — so your laptop doesn't have to.

This is Portugal Futurista's contribution to the world's textile heritage: the tools, the knowledge, and the bridge between tradition and tomorrow.

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Related Repos

• FlashFloppy — floppy emulator firmware
• pyembroidery — Python embroidery library
• libembroidery — C embroidery library
• Ink/Stitch — Inkscape digitizing extension
• Embroidermodder — Qt embroidery editor
• GreaseWeazle — USB floppy imager