official-pikafish/Pikafish

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1963 stars · 359 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Pikafish is a free, open-source UCI xiangqi (Chinese chess) engine derived from Stockfish, using NNUE neural network evaluation to analyze positions and compute optimal moves. It ships as a headless engine without a GUI, designed to be paired with third-party chess interfaces.

Use cases

• play against a strong xiangqi engine
• analyze Chinese chess positions and find best moves
• add a UCI xiangqi engine to a chess GUI
• study xiangqi openings and endgames with engine analysis
• run engine matches between xiangqi programs
• contribute to open-source game AI development

When to choose

• you need a powerful, actively developed open-source xiangqi engine
• you already have a UCI-compatible GUI and just need the engine
• you want NNUE-based evaluation strength comparable to Stockfish
• you need cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, macOS) with CPU instruction-set optimizations

When to avoid

• you want a complete app with a built-in graphical board out of the box
• you need engines for chess or other games rather than xiangqi
• you require a commercial-use license without checking the commercial authorization list
• you need a web-based opponent without any setup (use the official web version instead)

Facets

application · maturity active

game-engine machine-learning cli gaming-tools artificial-intelligence windows cpp cli xiangqi chinese-chess uci nnue stockfish-derived board-game-ai game-development linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="official-pikafish/Pikafish")