Claude for Godot: how to build a Godot game with Claude Code, step by step

Ask Claude Code for a double jump in a Godot platformer and you get a tidy script back: a jump counter, a reset when the player lands, the second jump a little weaker than the first. It reads well. You press F5 and the player jumps once, because the counter resets on the same frame the first jump leaves the ground. Claude never saw that happen. It wrote the code and stopped.

That gap is the whole story of Claude and Godot. Claude writes GDScript well, it knows the engine's node types, and it reads a scene file without trouble. What separates the four setups below is how much of the running game Claude can see: none of it, its errors, or its errors plus pictures and the keys you would press.

Every setup starts from the same place. A Godot 4 project is a folder of text files: project.godot, scenes as .tscn, resources as .tres, scripts as .gd. Anything that can edit files can edit a Godot game. The question is what happens after the edit.

Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. It runs in a terminal, or in the Code tab of the Claude desktop app, and works on the files in the folder you start it in. It needs a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or an Anthropic Console account billed per use; the free claude.ai plan does not include it.

On Windows, install it from PowerShell with the line below. Anthropic also lists winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode and an npm package. Then open a terminal in the folder that holds project.godot, type claude, and sign in when it asks.

Start with a question rather than a change: ask Claude to describe the project in five sentences, name the main scene and list the autoloads. If the summary is wrong, the changes will be too. Then ask for one change at a time, each with a way to check it.

Claude Code reads a file called CLAUDE.md at the root of the folder before it starts. Put the facts it would otherwise guess there: the Godot version, that scripts are GDScript with static types, where the main scene lives, and that the .godot folder is Godot's own cache and never to be edited.

The most useful line is a check it can run itself. Godot's command line can do a headless run of your game and quit after a set number of frames, printing every error to stdout. If Godot is on your PATH, Claude can run that after each change and read what broke. On Windows, point it at the console build of Godot, the executable whose name ends in _console.exe, so the output reaches the terminal.

That one line is most of the difference between Claude writing code and Claude checking code. It still is not the same as playing: a headless boot tells you the script parses and the scene loads, not that the jump works.

It can read and write every script, scene and resource, rename things across files, add input actions to project.godot, and chase a bug through three scripts faster than you would. With your permission it can run Godot from the terminal, as above, and read the errors.

It cannot see the game. It does not know the player clips through the floor, that the camera is pointing at the sky, or that the UI covers the score. It cannot press a key in your game or look at the editor. Scene files are text, but they carry resource IDs and UIDs that are easy to get subtly wrong by hand, and Claude editing a .tscn is guessing at what the editor would have written.

One trap catches everyone once. If a script is open in the Godot editor while Claude changes it on disk, Godot notices and asks whether to reload it. Answer Reload. Saving the editor's copy writes the old text back over Claude's change.

Cost: nothing beyond your Claude plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly; Max starts at $100 a month. Godot itself is free.

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is how an agent is handed tools beyond reading and writing files. A Godot MCP server is a small program that sits between Claude and Godot: Claude asks it to run the game, and it runs the game and hands back what Godot printed. This is the setup that closes the loop between writing code and seeing it fail.

The free one most people start with is Coding-Solo's godot-mcp, MIT licensed, about 5,900 stars on GitHub. It launches the editor, runs the project in debug mode and captures its output, stops it, creates scenes, adds nodes, loads sprites and saves scenes. Its README mentions no screenshots and no simulated input. It needs Node.js 18 or later and finds Godot by itself, or through a GODOT_PATH variable. One line registers it with Claude Code.

Two paid servers plug into the Godot editor you already use. GDAI MCP is $19 once: it edits scenes, nodes, scripts and resources, reads logs and debugger errors, takes screenshots of the editor and the running game, and injects key and input-action events into the running game, on Godot 4.2 and later. Godot MCP Pro is $15 once and lists 187 tools on its own site, including screenshots, input simulation and inspecting the running game, on Godot 4.4 and later.

Summer Engine, a desktop app built on Godot, ships a free, MIT-licensed MCP server too. Its page says an outside agent can run the game, collect its errors, send it input, take screenshots, and edit scenes and scripts. Those tools drive the Summer Engine app rather than a plain Godot editor, so the app has to be open with the project loaded.

After adding any server, type /mcp inside Claude Code. It lists each server and whether it connected. The comparison of the servers themselves, tool by tool, is in the best Godot MCP server.

More on this: What is Godot MCP?

Flockbay is a free AI game maker built on Godot: a desktop app with the official Godot 4.7.2 inside, not a fork, where your game is a real Godot 4 project you can open, read and change. It hands your own agent its tools over MCP, and connecting one is free. You need the app open with your game, and a free Flockbay account.

In the Flockbay app, open Connectors from the Flockbay menu, press Set up on the Another agent (MCP) row, press Turn on, pick Claude Code and press Copy. Paste the line into PowerShell. It registers one server, flockbay-stage, for your user, so Claude Code finds it from any folder. The app writes the line with your machine's own paths filled in; the shape is below. Beside Copy, Install skills and hooks puts Flockbay's instructions into Claude Code, and hooks that check a script parses after Claude edits it and ask Claude to play the game before it says a change works.

What Claude gets is the running game, not only its files. It edits scenes, nodes, scripts, resources and signals through the open Godot editor, and each change is one step in Godot's own undo history, so Ctrl+Z takes it back like your own. It plays the game and reads stdout, with each error's file, line and call stack. It captures the game viewport as the player sees it and the editor's 3D or 2D viewport. It injects timed key and mouse events into the game, and reads and changes the live scene tree while it runs.

It also gets the world: terrain, water, sky, weather, the player controller, and props, six families in a 3D world and four in a 2D one. Those are whole systems Claude calls rather than writes, so a coastline is one request instead of four hundred lines of mesh code. Its work shows in the app in its own chat, named Your agent.

The limits are plain. The Flockbay app runs on Windows today; the Mac release comes later. It needs an internet connection while you build. It works on the game the app has open, which can be a Godot project you already have: Flockbay asks before it adds anything to it. Flockbay is closed source. The full walk from install to a playable game is in how to make games in Claude Code.

More on this: Cursor for Godot: how to use Cursor on a Godot game, and let it run the game too

The Claude desktop app, on Windows and macOS, has two doors. The Code tab is Claude Code itself, with nothing else to install: everything in Way 1 and Way 2 applies there. The Chat tab is Claude as a chat, which reaches your game only through the MCP servers you give it.

To add a server to Chat, open Settings, then Developer, then Edit Config. That opens claude_desktop_config.json, which on Windows lives at %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json. Add the server under mcpServers, save, then quit Claude Desktop completely and start it again. The server then appears under Connectors in the menu at the bottom left of the message box. Some servers also come as Desktop Extensions, .mcpb files installed from Settings, then Extensions.

Chat suits asking questions about a scene or getting Claude to run the game and explain an error. It is a poor fit for writing a game, because it only touches what the server exposes: with a run-and-read server and no file access, it can describe a fix but not make it. Use the Code tab for the building.

The Flockbay app's setup dialog does not list Claude Desktop. The block it gives for Cursor is the same mcpServers shape Claude Desktop reads, but we have not tried it there, so treat that as untested.

More on this: Making games with Kilo Code and Flockbay

The last way needs no terminal. In the Flockbay app you pick Claude in the model menu, and Flockbay runs Claude Code on your Claude Pro or Max plan behind its own chat, beside the Godot editor. It finds Claude Code or installs it the first time, you sign in on Anthropic's page, and the menu lists the models and effort levels Claude Code gives your account. Nothing is pasted, and Flockbay charges nothing for it. It is on Windows, since Flockbay 2.0.

It works on the same tools as Way 2, and more. It asks one round of questions at a time, writes a short brief of what it will build first, and builds only after you approve it. Then it builds the world, writes the code, playtests the game. Generated pictures, sound and 3D models run on your own ElevenLabs and Tripo keys. The builder, the buttons around Godot's 3D and 2D view for sculpting, painting and placing, is there for the parts you would rather do by hand.

Two other ways run Claude models inside the app: your own Anthropic API key, added in Connectors and billed by that provider for what you use, and Flockbay's optional plans, whose model menu includes Claude models. New accounts also get a small free allowance called Demo, which runs a small, low-quality model rather than Claude, and the app says so.

Even the setup that playtests the game and captures the viewport cannot tell you whether the game is good. Claude can read the player's jump height and report that it went from 0 to 4.2 metres. It cannot tell you the jump feels floaty, that the camera makes you queasy, or that the second level is boring. A picture shows a frame, and feel lives between frames.

So the loop that works is short: one change, Claude checks it as far as its tools reach, you play it, you say what is wrong. People who hand Claude a forty-line design document and wait for a finished game get a pile of plausible code. People who ask for one mechanic, play it and ask for the next get a game.

Commit to git before each session in any setup. Undo in the editor covers one change; version control covers a bad afternoon.

You write code and want Claude as a fast pair of hands on a project you already have: Way 1, then add Coding-Solo's server the first time you catch yourself pasting an error back.

You want Claude to test its own work on an existing project: Way 2 with GDAI MCP or Godot MCP Pro, which reach the running game in your own Godot editor.

You are starting a new game and want Claude to build the world as well as the code, with the builder under your own hands: Way 2 with the Flockbay app, free on the Claude plan you already pay for, on Windows.

You do not want a terminal at all: Way 4, on the Claude plan you already pay for.

You are on a Mac today: Ways 1 to 3 with any of the servers above. The Flockbay app is Windows only for now.

Godot is free. Claude Code needs Claude Pro ($20 a month, or $17 billed yearly), Max (from $100), Team, Enterprise, or pay-as-you-go API credits through a Console account.

On top of that: Coding-Solo's godot-mcp is free. GDAI MCP is $19 once and Godot MCP Pro $15 once. Summer Engine's MCP server is free, and its plans are $20, $60 and $200 a month. The Flockbay app is free on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent or your own API key, and its optional plans are $20, $60 and $200 a month.

The honest summary: if you already pay for Claude, you can have Claude run and test a Godot game without spending another dollar.

The server does not show up in Claude Code. Type /mcp. If it is missing, you registered it in a different folder: Claude Code's default scope is the folder you were in. Remove it with claude mcp remove and add it again with --scope user, which is what the Flockbay app's line already does.

The server shows as failed. Run claude mcp get with the server's name to see why. For an npx server, check node --version is 18 or later. For Claude Desktop, read the logs in %APPDATA%\Claude\logs, where each server writes its own file.

Flockbay's server connects but lists a single tool. The app is not serving your agent yet: open the Flockbay app, open your game, and turn on Another agent in Connectors. The tools then appear by themselves. If they still do not, start a new Claude Code session.

Claude's change vanished. Godot's editor saved its older copy over it. Reload when Godot says a file changed on disk, and save in Godot before you ask Claude to edit a file you have open.

More on this: Connect your own agent