# recastnavigation/recastnavigation

Industry-standard navigation-mesh toolset for games

Repository: https://github.com/recastnavigation/recastnavigation
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/recastnavigation
Homepage: http://recastnav.com/
Language: C++
License: Zlib
License Family: permissive
Topics: ai, crowd-simulation, game-development, navigation, navmesh, pathfinding, game, gamedev, game-ai, game-dev, game-tool, navmesh-generation, pathfinding-library
Last push: 2026-02-27T07:17:13+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 54/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 69, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4735, "days_push": 187, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 7875, forks 1815 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:08.526949+00:00)

## What it is
Recast Navigation is an industry-standard C++ toolset for generating navigation meshes from level geometry and performing runtime pathfinding, with modules for navmesh streaming and crowd simulation. It is dependency-free, requiring only a C++98-compliant compiler, and powers AI navigation in Unity, Unreal, Godot, and many games.

## Use cases
- generate a navmesh from arbitrary level geometry
- pathfinding for game AI agents
- crowd simulation with collision avoidance
- stream tiled navmeshes for open-world games
- integrate navigation into a custom game engine
- debug and visualize navigation data

## When to choose
- you need battle-tested navmesh generation and pathfinding in C++
- you want a dependency-free library that builds anywhere
- you need tiled navmeshes or crowd simulation for large worlds
- you want the same navigation tech used by major engines

## When to avoid
- you need a high-level out-of-the-box solution rather than a C++ library to integrate
- your project is not C/C++ and you cannot bind to native code
- you only need simple grid-based movement without navmesh complexity

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: simulation, graphics, game-engine, sdk
- domain: simulation, artificial-intelligence, cross-platform
- platform: cpp, cross-platform, windows
- tags: navmesh, pathfinding, crowd-simulation, detour, game-ai, zlib-license, game-development, macos, linux

## Member repositories
- recastnavigation/recastnavigation (main) score 54

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:08.526949+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:33:43.850004+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/recastnavigation/recastnavigation (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:08.526949+00:00, sha 2d4784e430f9)
  - homepage: http://recastnav.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:30:12.985393+00:00, sha 373c0c1567ef)
  - site_page: http://recastnav.com/md_Docs_2__2__BuildingAndIntegrating.html (fetched 2026-08-29T08:30:12.987890+00:00, sha f381d33eafec)
  - site_page: http://recastnav.com/md_Docs_2__99__Roadmap.html (fetched 2026-08-29T08:30:12.989860+00:00, sha 1921f528fff4)
  - site_page: http://recastnav.com/md_CHANGELOG.html (fetched 2026-08-29T08:30:12.991673+00:00, sha ffb4008c270f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.