How to use AI in Unity: the AI assistant, MCP servers and coding agents (2026)

There are two ways to use AI in Unity, and you can combine them. Unity's AI assistant, launched as Unity AI, is Unity's own AI inside the editor: an Assistant that can plan and make changes in your project, plus generators for sprites, textures, sound, animation and simple 3D props. Or you can bring your own coding agent, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and connect it to the editor through Unity's free CLI, its MCP server or a community MCP server.

This guide covers what each option does and costs, how to set it up, and how to make the agent test its own work. Everything is as of November 7, 2026. Unity says its AI tools are still in beta, so menus and prices may change.

Unity's AI assistant and generators (formerly Unity AI)

Unity's AI tools went into open beta for Unity 6 on May 1, 2026, under the name Unity AI. Unity has since dropped that name: its AI page now says "We're retiring the 'Unity AI' brand name" and calls them Unity's AI tools: the in-editor AI assistant, the AI gateway, the MCP server, the official plugin and the CLI. Unity's docs (which are labeled pre-release) describe the assistant as "a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool integrated into the Unity Editor." It works in three modes:

• Ask explains things and answers questions about your project, using read-only tools.
• Plan writes a step-by-step plan for a bigger task.
• Agent makes changes directly in your project.

It also includes Generators for sprites, textures, materials, terrain layers, sound, animation and "simple props" as 3D objects, plus profiler analysis.

How to install and open it: Unity's docs recommend the AI menu in the editor toolbar, where you accept the terms and choose "Agree and install Unity AI." You can also add the package com.unity.ai.assistant through Window > Package Manager > + > "Install package by technical name." Once it's installed, open it from Window > AI > Assistant. It needs Unity 6; the install docs currently list 6000.0.76f1, Unity 6.3 or later.

Which models it uses: Unity's AI guiding principles (updated August 19, 2026) say the Assistant runs on Gemini models from Google, Claude models from Anthropic, Kimi K3, and GLM models from Z.ai, all hosted by Unity. You choose a tier (Unity Default, Lite, Ultra or Experimental); Ultra uses significantly more credits. The generators use partner models, including FLUX through Layer AI and Scenario, and Uthana for animation.

Bring your own agent (AI Gateway): the Gateway lets you run Claude Code, Codex, Gemini or Cursor inside the assistant window, using your own API keys. Unity's FAQ says using a third-party agent through the Gateway "will not consume Unity credits," though Unity's plan comparison says Personal users need the monthly subscription for it.

Is Unity's AI assistant free?

Partly. According to Unity's product page and its May 1 beta announcement:

Unity doesn't publish the price of extra credits on its pricing page. Unity's AI FAQ says the Unity CLI, its MCP server and Unity's official plugin are free with "no concurrency limits," and that the MCP server doesn't need an AI subscription. Unity's plan comparison table still lists limits on concurrent MCP connections (3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise), which appear to date from the older MCP server described below.

Who owns the output: Unity's guiding principles say "You own all your input and output data when using Unity's AI tools," and that training on your content is off by default. Unity's product page adds that generated assets carry metadata marking them as AI-generated, and that you're responsible for app store declarations and checking usage rights.

How to connect Claude Code, Codex or Cursor to Unity

If you'd rather use the agent you already pay for, Unity's free tools connect it to the editor. They need Unity 6.0 LTS or later and run on your own machine only.

1. Install Unity's plugin for your agent. The official plugin adds Unity skills (knowledge packs the agent loads when needed) for UI, 2D, URP, Shader Graph, physics, multiplayer, in-app purchases and more; the repo had 34 of them on November 7. In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add Unity-Technologies/unity-agent-plugin, then /plugin install unity@unity-agent-plugin. The README gives the equivalent commands for Codex, Grok, Google Antigravity and GitHub Copilot CLI, and the same skills install in other agents with npx skills add Unity-Technologies/skills. The plugin is free under the Unity Companion License; it's not an open-source license.

2. Install the Unity CLI so the agent can drive the editor. On macOS or Linux, Unity's docs give curl -fsSL https://unity.com/install.sh | bash or brew install --cask unity-cli; on Windows, winget install Unity.CLI. The CLI is still in beta (1.0.0-beta.17, November 5, 2026).

3. Connect it to your agent. Run unity pipeline install in your project, then unity mcp configure claude (or cursor, vscode and others; unity mcp configure --list shows them all). Unity also offers unity command and unity eval, which it says drive the editor directly and are "faster and use fewer tokens than MCP."

Ignore older setup guides that tell you to turn on the MCP server under Edit > Project Settings > AI. Unity has deprecated the MCP server inside the Assistant package and replaced it with the CLI's unity mcp command.

The plugin's README warns that its skills edit scripts, scenes and assets, so keep your project in version control and commit before each agent session.

Community Unity MCP servers

Several free community servers predate Unity's own and remain popular:

MCP for Unity's README now says it's sponsored and maintained by Aura; its original maker, Coplay, says it has joined Aura. (The older justinpbarnett/unity-mcp repository now redirects to it.) Coplay also offers a separate commercial server, Coplay MCP, which it says has 86 Unity tools and is free during its beta.

Using Cursor or VS Code with Unity

Unity officially supports Visual Studio, VS Code and JetBrains Rider as script editors; set yours under Edit > Preferences > External Tools (Unity > Settings on macOS). For VS Code, Unity's docs say to use the com.unity.ide.visualstudio package (2.0.20 or later) with Microsoft's C# and Unity extensions, and warn that the old com.unity.ide.vscode package "is no longer supported and should not be used."

Unity doesn't document Cursor. Because Cursor is built on VS Code, many people use the VS Code setup, and a community package from boxqkrtm (MIT, not affiliated with Unity), installed from its Git URL https://github.com/boxqkrtm/com.unity.ide.cursor.git, makes Cursor selectable as the external editor. Its package name is now com.boxqkrtm.ide.cursor. Add MCP with unity mcp configure cursor.

How to make the agent test its own work

The most useful thing to put in your agent's instructions (CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md) is how to run your tests, so it checks a change before calling it done:

• With the Unity CLI: unity test runs Edit Mode and Play Mode tests and writes an NUnit results file; unity build makes a build in batch mode.
• With the editor's command line: Unity -runTests -batchmode -projectPath <project> -testPlatform EditMode -testResults results.xml, where Unity is the full path to your editor (for example Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity on macOS). Use PlayMode for play-mode tests, and -testFilter or -testCategory to run a subset. Unity's docs warn that -quit isn't supported while tests run, so leave it out.
• For builds: Unity -batchmode -quit -projectPath <project> -executeMethod BuildScript.Build runs a static build method you've written in a script inside an Editor folder. On macOS and Linux, add -logFile - to print the log to the console.

Write tests with Unity's Test Framework so the agent has something to run. Without them, its only check is that the code compiles.

Skill packs for Unity agents

Skills teach a general coding agent Unity's conventions. Besides Unity's own:

• Unity Claude Skills (MIT): 35 skills based on Unity 6.3 LTS, according to its README.
• Awesome Gamedev Agent Skills (Apache-2.0): 8 Unity skills among 77. In Claude Code, add its marketplace with claude plugin marketplace add gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills, then claude plugin install unity@awesome-gamedev-agent-skills.
• Claude Code Game Studios (MIT): includes five Unity specialist agents, covering general Unity work, DOTS, shaders, Addressables and UI.

Our guide to engine skill packs for coding agents explains how skills work.

Other AI assistants for the Unity editor

• Bezi indexes your scenes, prefabs and code and, according to its site, can debug in Play Mode and run builds, for Unity and Unreal. It has a free trial with 100 credits; Pro costs $20 a month.
• Coplay, which says it's now part of Aura, has a free plan and a $20-a-month Professional plan for Unity; Aura's own plans cover both Unity and Unreal.

AI inside your Unity game

To put AI into the game itself rather than use it to build:

• Sentis (package com.unity.ai.inference, briefly called Inference Engine) is Unity's runtime for running your own ONNX, LiteRT and exported PyTorch models on players' devices, on CPU or GPU.
• LLM for Unity (Apache-2.0) runs language models locally through llama.cpp for NPC dialogue, and is free for personal and commercial use.
• Unity ML-Agents trains game characters with reinforcement learning; its latest release needs Unity 6.
• Hosted NPC services such as Convai have Unity plugins. Our AI NPCs guide compares them.

Limits and caveats

• Models still invent Unity APIs. In a study posted to arXiv on July 11, 2026, none of 10,400 single-pass Unity scene generations from four open-weight models of 7 to 30 billion parameters compiled into a runnable scene; the authors blame missing Unity-specific knowledge, such as invented or misused APIs, along with plain C# mistakes. That doesn't measure frontier models like Claude or GPT, and we found no public benchmark that does, but it's why the test step above matters.
• Unity's AI tools are in beta, and the CLI and plugin are labeled beta too. Unity's own docs disagree slightly on the minimum Unity 6 patch version.
• Disclose AI assets on the Asset Store. Unity allows AI-generated assets there but requires the listing to say so; its content policy prohibits "AI-generated content not marked as such" and applies a two-strike policy.
• AIGamer hasn't tested these tools. This guide compares what Unity and each project say about their own products.

How we chose

AIGamer compiled this guide from Unity's product, pricing and legal pages, Unity's documentation, posts by Unity staff on Unity Discussions, the Unity blog, each project's GitHub README (star counts from GitHub on November 7, 2026) and vendors' own pricing pages. We included the official tools plus community servers with recent updates and clear setup instructions. Unity games built this way include Mowtopia, most of which its developer says Claude Code built in about 2 days.

FAQ

Is Unity AI free?

Unity's FAQ says the Unity CLI, its MCP server and Unity's official plugin for coding agents are free. The in-editor AI assistant and generators come with Unity Pro, Enterprise and Industry; on Unity Personal you get a 14-day trial with 1,000 credits, then it costs $10 a month.

How do I open Unity's AI assistant?

Install it from the AI menu in the editor toolbar (or add the com.unity.ai.assistant package in the Package Manager), then open it from Window > AI > Assistant. It needs Unity 6.

What is Unity MCP?

It's a way for outside AI agents such as Claude Code or Cursor to control the Unity editor through the Model Context Protocol. Unity's own version now runs from the Unity CLI (unity mcp configure claude); the older server inside the Assistant package is deprecated. Free community servers such as MCP for Unity also exist.

Can I use Claude Code with Unity?

Yes. Install Unity's official plugin with /plugin marketplace add Unity-Technologies/unity-agent-plugin and /plugin install unity@unity-agent-plugin, then add the Unity CLI so Claude Code can drive the editor and run tests. Inside Unity's AI assistant, the AI Gateway can also run Claude Code without using Unity credits (on Personal it needs the $10 subscription).

Can I use Cursor with Unity?

Yes, though Unity doesn't officially support it. Use Unity's VS Code setup or the community Cursor package from boxqkrtm, and connect Cursor to the editor with unity mcp configure cursor.

Can I sell AI-generated assets on the Unity Asset Store?

Yes, as long as the product listing discloses that the content is AI-generated.