Universal Chess Interface

The Universal Chess Interface (UCI) is an open communication protocol that enables chess engines to communicate with user interfaces.^[1][2]

In November 2000, the UCI protocol was released. Designed by Rudolf Huber and

As of 2021[update], well over 300 engines are known to directly support UCI.

By design, UCI assigns some tasks to the user interface (i.e., presentation layer) which have traditionally been handled by the engine (at the business layer) itself.^{[citation needed]}

Most notably, the

While the UI can also take responsibility for handling endgame tablebases, this is arguably better handled in the engine itself, as having tablebase information can be useful for considering possible future positions.^[3]

Stefan-Meyer Kahlen's UCI protocol in Shredder uses a variation of long algebraic notation for moves. A "nullmove" from an engine to a GUI should be sent as 0000.^[4]

Examples

• e2e4
• e7e5
• e1g1 (white short castling)
• e7e8q (for promotion)

The uci_limitstrength parameter tells engines with this feature to play at a lower level. The uci_elo parameter specifies the

The UCI has been modified to play some chess variants. Some of these are:^[5]

• Universal Shogi Interface (USI), a dialect for shogi;^[6]
• Universal Chinese Chess Interface (UCCI), a dialect for xiangqi.^[7]

Each of these protocols may also define variants of Portable Game Notation (PGN) and Forsyth–Edwards Notation (FEN). The XBoard CECP is said to require far fewer changes to support variants.^[5]

• Chess Engine Communication Protocol
  (XBoard protocol)
• Shredder
• XBoard

• List of UCI Engines (continuously updated)
• UCI technical specification download page

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