CSC ChessBot

A customizable chess bot intended as a fun competitor for club events.

Features (planned / implemented in this repo)

• Local CLI opponent (human vs bot)
• UCI engine mode (plug into Arena/CuteChess/other GUIs)
• Adjustable skill levels and play styles
• Optional “talk” mode (stretch): contextual messages during the game

Setup

python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

Play in the terminal (CLI)

chessbot-cli --skill beginner --style aggressive

Options:

• --skill beginner|intermediate|club|strong
• --style aggressive|positional|chaotic|endgame_tech
• --time-ms 500 and/or --depth 4
• --talk (optional messages)

Run as a UCI engine

chessbot-uci

In your chess GUI/tournament manager, add an engine that runs chessbot-uci.

BanksiaGUI (macOS) setup (Apple Silicon)

• Download BanksiaGUI from https://banksiagui.com/download/
• In BanksiaGUI, when adding an engine you may only see Engine file. That means you must pick an executable file on disk.

You have two good choices:

1. Point directly at the installed executable (recommended if it works)\n

• Engine file: /opt/anaconda3/bin/chessbot-uci

2. Use the included wrapper script (recommended if PATH/env issues happen)\n

• Engine file: run-uci.sh\n
• Make it executable once:\n

chmod +x run-uci.sh

Once added, you should see UCI options:

• Skill: beginner|intermediate|club|strong
• Style: aggressive|positional|chaotic|endgame_tech

Dev

pytest