What is Chess Uci Mcp

chess-uci-mcp is an MCP server that acts as a bridge to connect to UCI-compatible chess engines, such as Stockfish, using the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) protocol.

Use cases

Use cases for chess-uci-mcp include integrating chess engines into applications for real-time analysis, developing chess training software, and creating interactive chess platforms that utilize advanced engine capabilities.

How to use

To use chess-uci-mcp, ensure you have Python 3.10 or newer and the required dependencies installed. Download a UCI-compatible chess engine like Stockfish, configure the MCP settings to include the path to the engine binary, and run the server using either ‘uvx’ or ‘uv’ commands.

Key features

Key features of chess-uci-mcp include compatibility with UCI chess engines, the ability to analyze chess positions using FEN strings, and easy configuration through JSON files for different operating systems.

Where to use

chess-uci-mcp can be used in various fields such as game development, chess analysis tools, educational platforms for learning chess, and AI research involving chess engines.

chess-uci-mcp

An MCP bridge that provides an interface to UCI chess engines (such as Stockfish).

Dependencies

You need to have Python 3.10 or newer, and also uv/uvx installed.

Usage

To function, it requires an installed UCI-compatible chess engine, like Stockfish (has been tested with Stockfish 17).

In case of Stockfish, you can download it from https://stockfishchess.org/download/.

On macOS, you can use brew install stockfish.

You need to find out the path to your UCI-capable engine binary; for further example configuration, the path is e.g. /usr/local/bin/stockfish (which is default for Stockfish installed on macOS using Brew).

The further configuration should be done in your MCP setup;
for Claude Desktop, this is the file claude_desktop_config.json (find it in Settings menu, Developer, then Edit Config).

The full path on different OSes

• macOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Add the following settings to your MCP configuration (depending on the way to run it you prefer):

Uvx (recommended)

Uvx is able to directly run the Python application by its name, ensuring all the dependencies, in a automatically-created virtual environment.
This is the preferred way to run the chess-uci-mcp bridge.

Set up your MCP server configuration (e.g. Claude Desktop configuration) file as following:

Uv

Use it if you have the repository cloned locally and run from it:

Available MCP Commands

The bridge provides the following MCP commands:

1. analyze - Analyze a chess position specified by FEN string
2. get_best_move - Get the best move for a chess position
3. set_position - Set the current chess position
4. engine_info - Get information about the chess engine

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/AnglerfishChess/chess-uci-mcp.git
# ... or
#    git clone [email protected]:AnglerfishChess/chess-uci-mcp.git

cd chess-uci-mcp

# Create a virtual environment
uv venv --python python3.10

# Activate the virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Unix/macOS
# or
.venv\Scripts\activate     # On Windows

# Install the package in development mode
#    uv pip install -e .
# or, with development dependencies
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Resync the packages:
uv sync --extra=dev

# Run tests
pytest

# Check code style
ruff check

Release process

uv build
uv-publish

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