Argus

A UCI-compatible chess engine written in C++17, built from scratch with a focus on correctness and progressive optimization.

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Overview

Argus is a classical chess engine that uses alpha-beta pruning to search for the best move in a given position. It communicates via the UCI protocol, meaning it plugs directly into any major chess GUI (CuteChess, Arena, etc.) without any extra configuration.

The engine is in early development — the core search and eval are functional, and the architecture is designed to make adding stronger features straightforward.

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Features

• UCI protocol — fully implemented, plug into any GUI out of the box
• Alpha-beta search — minimax with alpha-beta pruning
• Material evaluation — centipawn-accurate piece values
• Move ordering — skeleton in place, MVV-LVA coming next
• Legal move generation — via chess-library by Disservin

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Project Structure

Argus/
├── lib/
│   └── chess-library/        # Disservin's chess-library (move generation)
├── src/
│   ├── main.cpp
│   ├── engine/
│   │   ├── search.h / search.cpp     # Alpha-beta search
│   │   ├── evaluate.h / evaluate.cpp # Position evaluation
│   │   └── movesort.h / movesort.cpp # Move ordering
│   └── uci/
│       └── uci.h / uci.cpp           # UCI protocol handler
├── tests/
│   └── perft.cpp                     # Move generation correctness tests
└── CMakeLists.txt

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Building

Requirements

• GCC 15+ or Clang with C++17 support
• CMake 3.16+
• Ninja (recommended)

On Windows, use the MSYS2 UCRT64 terminal. Install dependencies with:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-ninja

Build

cmake -B build -G "Ninja"
cmake --build build

The engine binary will be at build/Argus.exe (Windows) or build/Argus (Linux/macOS).

Run perft tests

cmake --build build --target Perft
./build/Perft

Expected output from the starting position:

Depth	Nodes
1	20
2	400
3	8,902
4	197,281
5	4,865,609
6	119,060,324

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Using with a GUI

1. Download CuteChess
2. Go to Tools → Engines → Add
3. Point the executable path to build/Argus.exe
4. Set protocol to UCI
5. Start a game

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UCI Manual Mode

You can also talk to the engine directly in the terminal:

uci
→ id name Argus
→ id author Aitaneuh
→ uciok

isready
→ readyok

position startpos moves e2e4 e7e5
go
→ info depth 6 score cp 30 nodes 124000 nps 980000
→ bestmove g1f3

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Roadmap

• UCI communication
• Legal move generation
• Alpha-beta pruning
• Material evaluation
• MVV-LVA move ordering
• Piece-square tables (PST)
• Iterative deepening
• Transposition table
• Time management
• Opening book

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Dependencies

• chess-library by Disservin — header-only move generation library

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License

MIT