Wisdom Chess

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Wisdom Chess is a chess engine with apps to play it on the web, on Windows, macOS and Linux desktops, on Android and in a terminal. It is free software under the MIT License.

🌐 Play online at wisdom-chess.netlify.app

Download

Installers for Windows (x64), macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux (x86_64) are attached to each release on the GitHub Releases page. Each bundles everything the app needs, so nothing else has to be installed.

The installers are not code-signed, so operating systems warn before running them:

• Windows: SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. The installer asks for administrator rights to install into Program Files\Wisdom Chess, adds Start Menu and desktop shortcuts, and installs the MSVC runtime if needed.
• macOS: Gatekeeper refuses to open the installer app on the mounted disk image. Right-click it and choose Open, or allow it under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway. Alternatively clear the quarantine flag: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine <installer.app>. The app is installed to /Applications/Wisdom Chess/.
• Linux: make the file executable (chmod +x wisdom-chess-*.run) and run it. It asks for your password to install into /opt/WisdomChess and adds a Wisdom Chess entry to the application menu. Use ./wisdom-chess-*.run --root ~/WisdomChess to install into your home directory instead. The bundled Qt needs the usual X11/xcb libraries from your distribution; on Debian/Ubuntu that is libxcb-cursor0 libxkbcommon-x11-0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-shape0 libgl1 libegl1 libfontconfig1. The binary links against the build machine's C and C++ runtimes, so it needs a distribution at least as new as the one it was built on: the release installers are built on Ubuntu 24.04 (glibc 2.39, GCC 13).

Uninstall with the WisdomChessMaintenanceTool placed next to the app.

Features

• Play against the engine as either colour, watch it play itself, or play another person on the same device.
• Set how deep and how long the engine thinks, from an instant reply to a thirty-second search.
• Move pieces by clicking or by dragging them; choose the piece a pawn promotes to.
• The full rules: castling, en passant, check and checkmate, stalemate, and draws by threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, insufficient material and their automatic forms. A draw you may claim is offered to you rather than imposed.
• Flip the board, pause the engine, and start a new game at any time.
• The same engine plays in the browser, on the desktop, on Android and in a terminal, and as a UCI engine in any chess GUI.

Screenshots

Building from source

Every frontend, the CMake options and the test suites are described in docs/building.md. The console version needs only a C++20 compiler and CMake:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j8
./build/src/wisdom-chess/ui/console/wisdom-chess-console

Contributing

docs/building.md covers building and testing every part of the project, and AGENTS.md records the code conventions and the things to know before changing each frontend.

License

Copyright © Dave Meybohm

The chess engine and applications are released under the MIT License.

Third-Party Assets

• Chess piece images: Copyright Colin M.L. Burnett, used under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0
• UI icons: From Boxicons, used under Creative Commons 4.0