Chess_Probabilistic_Programming/lichess_bot/wiki/Create-a-custom-engine.md

Creating a custom engine

As an alternative to creating an entire chess engine and implementing one of the communication protocols (UCI or XBoard), a bot can also be created by writing a single class with a single method. The search() method in this new class takes the current board and the game clock as arguments and should return a move based on whatever criteria the coder desires.

Steps to create a homemade bot:

1. Do all the steps in the How to Install
2. In the config.yml, change the engine protocol to homemade
3. Create a class in some file that extends MinimalEngine (in strategies.py).
   • Look at the strategies.py file to see some examples.
   • If you don't know what to implement, look at the EngineWrapper or UCIEngine class.
     • You don't have to create your own engine, even though it's an "EngineWrapper" class.
       The examples just implement search.
4. In the config.yml, change the name from engine_name to the name of your class

   • In this case, you could change it to:

     name: "RandomMove"