Waica 🐕

An archetype-driven, open source game engine for the web.

Pick what you're making — a platformer, a top-down adventure, an isometric game — and Waica sets up the movement, the camera, the physics and the exact animations you'll need. Opinionated rails for the common 90%, a real TypeScript engine underneath for everything else. 2D and 3D, one core.

Status: the editor is the center of the product (milestone 2, pulled forward; milestone 1's 3D/WebGPU leftovers still pending). The platformer archetype runs end to end with factory game feel — coyote time, jump buffering, jump cut, squash & stretch — and characters are data-first: states and transitions live in the prefab JSON, behavior code lives in roles (player, patroller, chaser, or your own scaffolded into src/roles/). A project is plain files — scenes, prefabs, controls, stats and UI pieces are JSON/HTML you can read, hand-edit and commit.

• Design doc: DESIGN.md
• Stack: TypeScript · three.js (WebGPU → WebGL2 planned) · Vite
• Exports: web (static HTML) now; desktop via Electron (Steam/Epic) planned
• License: MIT

Named after a childhood dog. She was a good girl.

The Editor

npx @waica/cli   # no clone needed — serves the editor and opens your browser

Or install it globally to keep the waica command around:

npm install -g @waica/cli
waica

Published as @chichex/waica up to 0.3.0, before the @waica org existed. That name is deprecated and frozen at 0.3.0 — switch to @waica/cli.

Or from a checkout:

pnpm install
pnpm editor

The Waica Editor runs in your browser, local-first: create a project into any empty folder (File System Access API) from an archetype — demo level or blank chassis —, drag pieces from the palette into the viewport (grid, pan/zoom, multi-select, undo/redo), edit every component param in the inspector, wire state machines and animations in their own panels, bring your own art (with spritesheet detection), manage per-project controls and stats, press Play to test in place, and edit the code with Monaco. Scenes are plain JSON in your project — what you edit is what you commit.

Run the example

pnpm dev   # platformer archetype — ← → move · space jump

Packages

Package	What it is
@waica/engine	Core: game loop, Entity + Components, scene JSON + prefab registry, StateMachine + role registry (defineRole/defineStates), DynamicBody/Solid/Hitbox collisions, input actions, sprites + animation contracts, scene camera, stats, HTML UI layer, THREE re-export
@waica/behaviors	Curated game-feel library: PlatformerMotor and the player role, plus patroller, chaser and npc, Collectible, Hazard, Respawnable, Lifetime
@waica/archetype-platformer	Opinionated platformer setup — playable from minute zero: default scene, prefabs, controls, HUD and stock art. The placeholder hero is Waica herself (pixel art, script-generated)
@waica/editor	The app: create/open projects (owns the new-project template), viewport with drag & drop, inspector, state machine & animation editors, controls/stats views, play-in-editor, Monaco
@waica/mcp	Stdio MCP server for agents: project creation, introspection, validation, scaffolds, and browser-backed Run Sessions with deterministic control, Runtime Snapshots and screenshots. Not published on its own — it ships inside @waica/cli
@waica/cli	One-command launcher: npx @waica/cli serves the pre-built editor and opens your browser, waica mcp serves the MCP server. The package is scoped; the binary it installs is plain waica

The engine, behaviors and archetype libraries are published to npm together with @waica/cli, always on the same version — that is what a generated project installs. @waica/editor and @waica/mcp are not published on their own; they ship inside the CLI.

Agentic development

claude mcp add waica -- npx -y @waica/cli mcp

See packages/mcp/README.md for all 15 tools, the absolute project_path contract, runtime trust boundary, system Chrome prerequisite, deterministic pause/step semantics, cleanup guarantees, editor-coexistence guidance, and how to run a generated Project against the workspace.