Talos Engine
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Since 0.6

Talos is a game engine you can drive yourself or hand to your own tools and scripts.

Plain text

Tools and scripts: read this file first, then the agent guide "Start here" (argus://docs/agent#start-here once you are connected). To connect yourself to Talos, run the one command in Connect your AI and ask the person to restart you.

Talos is a game engine you can drive yourself or hand to your own tools and scripts. This page gets you from the installer to a game you can send to someone, in about ten minutes, and connects your AI in one step. It is for the first testers: friends and family, and milsim and game engineers.

The product is Talos; its programs and folders keep the internal name argus (argus-editor.exe, argus-agent.exe, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus).

  1. What you need
  2. Getting started in 10 minutes
  3. Connect your AI
  4. For tools and scripts
  5. What to ask your AI first
  6. Report a bug, ask for a feature
  7. Known limitations
  8. Where the logs and crash files are

What you need

  • Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit (x64). There is no macOS, Linux or Arm build yet.
  • A graphics card with current drivers (DirectX 12 or Vulkan): any recent NVIDIA, AMD or Intel GPU.
  • About 1 GB of free disk for the launcher, one engine version and your first projects.
  • The installer Cadarn sent you (an .msi), its SHA-256, and for the online installer your personal access token. The offline installer needs no token and no internet.
  • For the AI part: Claude Code, or any other MCP client. You do not need Node, Rust, Visual Studio or a copy of the source.

Getting started in 10 minutes

Install, make your first project from a template, Play it, change something, and export a game you can send to someone.

Install (2 minutes)

  1. Check the file: in PowerShell, Get-FileHash .\<installer>.msi must print the SHA-256 Cadarn sent.
  2. Double-click it. Windows will say "Windows protected your PC": the installer is not code-signed yet, so choose More info, then Run anyway. It installs for your account only, with no administrator prompt, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus.
  3. Start Talos Launcher from the Start menu. With the online installer, paste your access token when asked, then open the Engine tab and press Install. The offline installer has already installed the engine.

Your first project (2 minutes)

  1. On the Projects tab, choose New project.
  2. Pick a Type (2D, 3D or 3D HD) and a Template: Collection course is a small playable game; Starter is a floor, three boxes and a player; 2D starter is a small side-scroller.
  3. Give it a Name and press Create. New projects go in Documents\Argus unless you change the folder in Settings. The project opens in the editor.

Play, change something, Play again (4 minutes)

  1. Press F5 (or the toolbar's Play) to play. Shift+Esc stops; plain Esc belongs to the game.
  2. Click something in the viewport, move it with W (move tool) and drag the arrows, or change a value in the Inspector. Ctrl+S saves, Ctrl+Z undoes.
  3. Press F5 again. Play runs the saved scene, and asks to save first when you have unsaved changes.

Export a game (2 minutes)

  1. Press Export… on the toolbar. The panel names the build it will export and anything it leaves out.
  2. Choose a folder (by default dist beside the project) and export. You get one .exe that runs on a Windows PC with no Talos installed; Open Output shows it in Explorer.

Connect your AI

Talos speaks MCP (Model Context Protocol) through argus-agent.exe, which is installed with every engine version (it starts argus.exe agent, and configs that name it keep working across updates). One command connects a project to it.

Claude Code, in PowerShell, from your project folder:

cd "$env:USERPROFILE\Documents\Argus\My Game"
& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Argus\launcher\argus-hub.exe" --connect-ai .
claude

The first line is your project folder (yours may be elsewhere). The second writes .mcp.json in it. Then start Claude Code there with claude and approve the argus server when it asks. /mcp in Claude Code should list argus as connected, and its tools are mcp__argus__*.

What it writes (your paths will differ):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "argus": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "C:\\Users\\you\\AppData\\Local\\Argus\\launcher\\argus-hub.exe",
      "args": ["--mcp-agent", "C:\\Users\\you\\Documents\\Argus\\My Game"],
      "alwaysLoad": true
    }
  }
}

Each time your AI client starts it, the launcher finds the engine version that opens this project (as Open does) and runs that engine's argus-agent.exe, with the engine's own Node and a log at <project>\.argus\logs\argus-agent.log. An engine update needs nothing from you: the same file starts the new engine's agent. Any other server already in .mcp.json is kept.

Any other MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, and others) takes the same argus entry: copy it from .mcp.json into that client's MCP config. Some clients name the top-level key differently (VS Code uses servers); the entry inside is the same.

Without the launcher (a hand-copied engine, say), the engine's own argus-agent.exe setup --print --project . prints an entry that names that argus-agent.exe directly, and setup without --print writes it into .mcp.json. That entry points at one engine version, so run it again after you replace the engine.

Every new project also has an AGENTS.md (and a CLAUDE.md that includes it) telling an agent to read this page first and how to connect.

For tools and scripts

If you are a tool or script working in a Talos project:

  1. Check for the Talos tools (mcp__argus__* in Claude Code; the server is called argus). If you have none, run the --connect-ai . command above in the project folder yourself, then ask the person to restart you and approve the server.
  2. The project is already open: the config passes --project. Call notes.read first (what earlier sessions learned), then read argus://docs/agent#start-here, the engine's one-page guide to building a game, before your first edit.
  3. Build with the tools, not by editing files by hand: scene.read, scene.patch, behaviour.write, and critic.check after every write; critic.play to play-test; export.compose to ship.
  4. Where the docs are: explain.search in plain words; argus://recipes for whole tested features (menus, HUD, save, driving); argus://docs for every document by section (this page is argus://docs/start). If you cannot read argus:// resources (a subagent often cannot), read the files: START-HERE.md in the engine folder and sdk/docs/AGENT.md ("Start here") in it, with sdk/docs/PLAYBOOK-TEAM-BUILD.md for a team. The engine folder is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\engines\<version>\ on Windows, ~/.local/share/argus/engines/<version>/ on Linux and WSL ($ARGUS_HOME/engines/<version>/ if set); the docsDir in the notes.read result is the exact folder. Do not search the disk for them.
  5. Keep what you learn with notes.append, so the next session starts from it.

What to ask your AI first

  • "Read START-HERE.md and the Talos Start here guide, then tell me what this project contains and what you can build in it."
  • "Make a small game in this project: a player that collects five coins against a 60-second timer, a title screen and a results screen. Play-test it with the critic and fix what it finds."
  • "Export the game, run the exported .exe, and tell me where it is and anything that did not work."

Report a bug, ask for a feature

  • Bugs: in the editor, Help â–¸ Report a bug (or Ctrl+Shift+F1); in the Talos Launcher, Report a bug in the top bar. F6 is not the bug report (it is Play from the last snapshot). You see exactly what will be sent before you send it; screenshots and logs are only attached if you tick them, and project files never are. Please include the time and what you were doing.
  • Features and ideas: the roadmap at https://cadarn.ai/talos/roadmap, or Report a bug with the category "feature request".

Known limitations

  • Windows only, x64 only, for the editor and for exported games.
  • Unsigned for now: "Windows protected your PC" on install is expected (More info, then Run anyway).
  • No runtime file access yet: a game cannot read or write arbitrary files while it runs.
  • The 2D editor is new: expect rough edges, and please report them.

Where the logs and crash files are

  • Launcher log: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\logs\argus-hub.log
  • Editor log: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\logs\argus-editor.log
  • Editor crash reports: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\crashes\ (the newest twenty)
  • An exported game's crash reports: %LOCALAPPDATA%\argus-export\<payload id>\crashes\
  • Bug reports waiting to be sent: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\reports\outbox\
  • The agent server's log: <project>\.argus\logs\argus-agent.log

More detail: docs/INSTALL.md (installing, what goes where, crash reports) and the agent guide (everything the agent interface does).