≈2400 on limited-Stockfish benchmarks — fully legal, original Rust UCI engine. See strength ladder.
Download prebuilt binaries — macOS Apple Silicon & Linux x86_64 (UCI; no Rust required).
Research target: an LLM-iterated engine with no copied engine core, independent perft/legality validation, UCI protocol compliance, and automated tournament survival.
Tagged releases include host binaries (no Rust required):
| Platform | Asset |
|---|---|
| macOS Apple Silicon | labzero-macos-aarch64 |
| Linux x86_64 | labzero-linux-x86_64 |
Get them from GitHub Releases (latest tag, e.g. v0.5.4). Each upload has a .sha256 sidecar; SHA256SUMS lists all files.
macOS: release binaries are not code-signed or notarized. On first run, Gatekeeper may block the app (“unidentified developer”). Use Right click → Open, or verify the .sha256 checksum and build from source if you prefer. Linux users can verify with sha256sum -c against SHA256SUMS.
Quick smoke after download:
chmod +x labzero-macos-aarch64 # or labzero-linux-x86_64
printf 'uci\nisready\nquit\n' | ./labzero-macos-aarch64Point your UCI GUI (Banksia, Cute Chess, etc.) at that path. To build from source instead, see below.
Maintainers: push a semver tag to publish — git tag v0.5.4 && git push origin v0.5.4 runs .github/workflows/release.yml.
Requires Podman. On macOS, start a Podman machine first.
./scripts/podman/build-image
./scripts/podman/build-engine
./scripts/podman/verify-smoke
./scripts/podman/cimacOS GUI (Banksia): build a native binary first — Podman output is Linux-only.
./scripts/build-host-engine.sh
./scripts/play-uci.sh # prints target/release/labzero for BanksiaSee User manual for full GUI setup.
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
./scripts/podman/ci |
Daily smoke gate |
./scripts/podman/verify-deep |
Deep perft, 200-game fuzz, Rust cross-checks |
./scripts/podman/gauntlet --smoke |
10-game tournament |
./scripts/podman/gauntlet |
100-game tournament gauntlet |
./scripts/podman/bot --dry-run |
Lichess bridge dry-run (dev stub) |
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
engine/ |
Original UCI chess engine (Rust) |
verifier/ |
Independent Python/Rust validation tools |
lichess_bot/ |
Minimal Lichess bridge stub (dev/CI dry-run); live play uses lichess-bot |
tournaments/ |
Fastchess smoke and gauntlet scripts |
docs/ |
Architecture, user manual, submission pack |
containers/ |
Podman image definition |
scripts/podman/ |
Portable build/test/CI wrappers |
- User manual — play vs engine
- Submission package
- Lichess bot setup
- Human play QA checklist
- Originality policy
- Reproducibility / Podman
- UCI commands
- Lab log
- Alpha paper draft
MIT — see LICENSE.