UCI

Home * Protocols * UCI

UCI, (Universal Chess Interface) an open communication protocol for chess engines to play games automatically, that is to communicate with other programs including Graphical User Interfaces. UCI was designed and developed by Rudolf Huber and Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, and released in November 2000. It has, by-in-large, replaced the older Chess Engine Communication Protocol (WinBoard/XBoard).

=Design Philosophy= The UCI capable GUI is not only View and Controller of a chess MVC, but also keeps the Model with its internal game states. It is also an "arbiter" instance to decide about the outcome of the game, for instance in declaring a game to be drawn after a threefold repetition has occurred. The UCI GUI may choose and play moves from an opening book and endgame tablebase.

=Critique= While the UCI design makes it simple for engine programmers to integrate a "stateless" chess engine, it was also disputed by various chess programmers, since it subsumes engine control parameters and delegates possibly game decisive stuff to the GUI.

Contra
Excerpt concerning UCI from a Robert Hyatt interview by Frank Quisinsky in 2002 : I simply don't like UCI. It subsumes all engine control parameters. It tells the engine when to ponder, when to search, when to stop, etc. That is contrary to my design and I have no interest in hacking Crafty to support something that is so different from the WinBoard/XBoard protocol that has been around for a long time and which works perfectly.

It removes several critical engine-decisions that are best made by the engine, not the GUI.

Pro
Fabien Letouzey emphasize the ease of implementation in a Quisinsky interview, April 05, 2005 : The choice of UCI is based on software-design principles that are not easy to explain. It's a programmer's thing really, I don't expect engine users to understand. Let me give you a clue though: think about young WinBoard engines that you have tried; how many handled pondering ... without bugs??? Another clue might be that surely, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen knows a lot about good programming, right? So trust him if not me, UCI is good for programmers because it leads to fewer bugs in the code ... Fabien wrote a protocol translation program, PolyGlot to allow use of the new protocol on Linux, though this is now supported natively by the powerful Scid vs. PC toolkit. Scid vs. PC itself includes Polyglot code to enable support for Polyglot opening books.

=Engines= =GUIs=
 * UCI Engines
 * Linux Engines
 * Aquarium
 * Arena
 * Chess Assistant
 * ChessBase (Database)
 * Chess for Android
 * ChessPartner
 * Chess Wizard
 * Cute Chess
 * Fritz GUI
 * HIARCS Chess Explorer
 * Jerry
 * jose
 * Kvetka
 * LittleBlitzer
 * PyChess
 * SCID
 * Scid vs. PC
 * Scidb
 * Shredder GUI
 * Tarrasch

=Utilities=
 * InBetween
 * JSUCI
 * PolyGlot
 * Wb2UCI
 * UCI2WB

=See also=
 * Chess Engine Communication Protocol
 * CPW-Engine_com
 * Engine Testing
 * Vice UCI-Videos
 * WinBoard
 * XBoard

=Forum Posts=

2000 ...

 * UCI (=universal chess interface) by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, CCC, November 28, 2000
 * UCI Issues by Peter McKenzie, CCC, February 25, 2001
 * UCI - a good idea? by David Rasmussen, CCC, December 15, 2001
 * Delphi and the UCI Protokoll by Martin Bauer, CCC, April 18, 2002 » Delphi
 * One more time Delphi and UCI by Martin Bauer, CCC, April 21, 2002
 * UCI versus Winboard by Bas Hamstra, CCC, August 21, 2002
 * UCI - Worth Implementing? by David Rasmussen, CCC, December 07, 2002
 * UCI-protocoll and engines. score cp (x) by Juergen Wolf, CCC, April 01, 2003
 * Extension of the UCI protocol by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, CCC, April 15, 2004

2005 ...

 * UCI protocol question by Jon Dart, CCC, October 04, 2005
 * UCI protocol and SMP by Aart Bik, CCC, November 13, 2008 » Parallel Search, SMP
 * Appeal to SMP-engines programmers using UCI by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, January 09, 2009
 * UCI protocol in winboard by Engin Üstün, Winboard Forum, September 24, 2009 » Chess Engine Communication Protocol, WinBoard

2010 ...
2011 2012 2013 2014
 * Handling UCI protocol and Stockfish / Glaurung behavior by Pascal Georges, CCC, January 10, 2010 » Stockfish, Glaurung
 * UCI extensions for kibitzing by Aaron Becker, CCC, March 05, 2010
 * UCI issues by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, May 24, 2010
 * some UCI protocol issues/questions by Jon Dart, CCC, December 17, 2010
 * SMP for Android UCI engines by Aart Bik, CCC, April 14, 2011 » Android, SMP
 * UCI multipv question by Martin Sedlak, CCC, June 11, 2011 » Multi-PV
 * UCI nullmove by Marco Costalba, CCC, August 03, 2011
 * UCI Engine Tuning by Steven Atkinson, CCC, August 20, 2011
 * About UCI multipv by Fermin Serrano, CCC, January 17, 2012 » Multi-PV
 * good macintosh guy for UCI engine development by Sam Hamilton, CCC, January 25, 2012 » GUI, Macintosh, Mac OS
 * Ponder and UCI by geko, OpenChess Forum, November 19, 2012 » Pondering
 * Problem with UCI engines hash in Arena by Carl Langan, CCC, December 26, 2012 » Arena
 * UCI Interfacing question by epideath, OpenChess Forum, July 05, 2013
 * UCI protocol issue by Jon Dart, CCC, July 27, 2013 » Repetitions
 * uci ponder protocol by Marco Belli, CCC, August 17, 2013 » Pondering
 * UCI variants support by Balint Pfliegel, CCC, December 15, 2013
 * JSUCI 1.0 - connect javascript chess engines to UCI by Edmund Moshammer, CCC, March 28, 2014 » JavaScript
 * UCI, ownbooks, and a potential problem by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, June 16, 2014 » Opening Book
 * UCI exclude move by Steven Atkinson, CCC, July 30, 2014
 * UCI Protocol by jay dee, CCC, August 31, 2014
 * PV after stop/readyok by Steven Atkinson, CCC, October 20, 2014
 * UCCI2WB by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, October 27, 2014 » Chinese Chess
 * UCI protocol for chess variants by Evert Glebbeek, CCC, October 28, 2014
 * How does input console for UCI work ? by Piotr Lopusiewicz, CCC, December 20, 2014

2015 ...

 * UCI request answers all time..... how to do it? by Luis Babboni, CCC, March 14, 2015
 * UCI way to communications. Wich kind of inputs? by Luis Babboni, CCC, March 15, 2015
 * UCI extension: nodestime by Marco Costalba, CCC, March 22, 2015
 * UCI extension: nps NODE_RATE by Marco Costalba, CCC, March 23, 2015
 * ponder engine-gui interaction by Alexandru Mosoi, CCC, June 25, 2015 » Pondering
 * Crafty UCI version by Marek Soszynski, July 10, 2015 » Crafty
 * Ugly UCI by Fermin Serrano, CCC, November 27, 2015
 * Re: Ugly UCI by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, November 27, 2015

2016 2017 2018
 * stateless UCI by Marco Belli, CCC, February 13, 2016 » Pondering
 * Question to UCI engine authors by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, December 01, 2016
 * UCI protocol: letting the engine know the game result by Folkert van Heusden, CCC, January 19, 2017
 * UCI: Console Play Mode? by Matthew Hull, CCC, February 20, 2017
 * Novag UCB drivers (Winboard and UCI) by Graham O'Neill, CCC, February 24, 2017 » Novag Universal Electronic Chess Board
 * Reporting a draw in UCI by Vince Sempronio, CCC, May 05, 2017 » Draw
 * UCI, What command should the engine expect while it's searching by Mahmoud Uthman, CCC, June 09, 2017
 * UCI on another thread, programming help ! by Mahmoud Uthman, CCC, June 11, 2017
 * UCI error codes? by Rasmus Althoff, CCC, July 21, 2017
 * Regarding UCI Pondering by Manik Charan, CCC, September 28, 2017 » Pondering
 * UCI pondering or infinite search by Lucas Braesch, CCC, November 10, 2017 » Pondering
 * Regarding options ponder flag by Jürgen Précour, CCC, December 06, 2017 » Pondering
 * UCI vs Winboard question by Michael Sherwin, CCC, March 05, 2018 » Chess Engine Communication Protocol, WinBoard
 * UCI Pondering workaround by Andrew Grant, CCC, July 13, 2018 » Pondering

=External Links=
 * The UCI Specification
 * Universal Chess Interface From Wikipedia
 * Interview with SOS programmer Rudolf Huber in German language! by Frank Quisinsky, Arena Chess GUI 3.0 - Archive 9, 132, May 10, 2005

Implementations

 * UCI Engine Support for Android by Aart Bik
 * Back to the 80's with UCI by Ed Schröder » Mephisto
 * Senjo C++ UCI Adapter by Shawn Chidester » Clubfoot, C++
 * GitHub - freeeve/uci: a UCI (Universal Chess Interface) API for golang by Eve Freeman » Go (Programming Language)
 * nionita/chessNet · GitHub by Nicu Ionita » Haskell

JavaScript

 * Javascript Universal Chess Interface | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net by Edmund Moshammer
 * GitHub - ebemunk/node-uci: UCI Protocol for node.js - talk to chess engines painlessly by Buğra Fırat
 * node-uci Documentation


 * GitHub - imor/uci: A thin wrapper on a uci chess engine

=Video Tutorials=
 * An overview of the UCI protocol from a programmer's perspective by Jonathan Warkentin, YouTube Video


 * Implementing the UCI protocol in your engine (pseudo code) by Jonathan Warkentin, YouTube Video

=References=

Up one Level