Shuriken Studio
An AI game studio for Roblox, on your desktop. Describe a game in a sentence. A team of AI agents
researches it, plans it, builds it inside Roblox Studio, playtests it, has it reviewed by an independent
critic, fixes what the review finds and checkpoints the result, while you watch, chat with the director and
step in whenever you like.
Shuriken Studio is free and open source under the MIT license.
Shuriken Studio is an independent project. It is not made, endorsed or supported by Roblox Corporation or
Anthropic. Roblox and Roblox Studio are trademarks of Roblox Corporation; Claude and Claude Code are
trademarks of Anthropic.
Screenshots
Screenshots coming soon. (Put images in docs/screenshots/ and link them here: the start page, the
director's chat and dashboard, a workshop such as UI or Animation, and the 3D viewer.)
What it does
- One prompt to a playable game. The director turns your idea into a plan (a task graph); specialists work
on it in parallel; their code is synced into Studio; the work is checked with static analysis, Luau
assertions, playtests and screenshots; an independent reviewer accepts or rejects it; rejected work is
repaired; a regression suite and a git checkpoint close each milestone.
- A whole team. Director, planner and researcher, plus game designer, Roblox and Luau engineers, UI engineer,
level designer, environment artist, VFX artist, sound designer, store designer, thumbnail artist, QA,
security and performance engineers, and reviewers. Each has its own role, skills and tools.
- Workshops with copilots. Animation, effects, music and sound, 3D models, UI (mockups, the UI Lab's device
checks and UI Forge's procedural UI art) and the storefront (game passes, developer products, icons,
thumbnails and store copy). A copilot works in its own field and drafts first; nothing goes into the game
until you say so.
- Bring your own game. Open an existing place: Shuriken studies it, pulls its scripts to disk and keeps
Studio and the files in sync without clobbering edits made in Studio.
- It owns the state. Tasks, decisions, knowledge, research, evidence and history live in each project's own
database and markdown files, not in any AI conversation, so a crash, a restart or a usage limit loses nothing.
- Several games at once. Every project window runs its own engine, and builds keep going in the windows
behind. Each build runs a few agents working steadily (4 at once by default, up to 8; 2 of them in Studio at a
time, up to 3), and the top bar shows what the build cost at API prices.
- Stays out of your way. Agent playtests don't steal the focus, pin your mouse or play sound while you work in
another window.
- MCP-native. It drives Studio through Studio's own MCP server and serves its own curated MCP tools to the
agents (and to your own MCP clients).
Requirements
| What | Why | Notes |
|---|
| Windows 11, 64-bit | The app is Windows-only | It manages Studio windows, runs PowerShell helpers and ships as an NSIS installer. Windows 10 may work but is not tested. |
| Roblox Studio, signed in | Where the games are built | Turn on Studio's MCP server: in Studio, Assistant → Manage MCP Servers → Enable Studio as MCP server. Shuriken finds StudioMCP.exe in your Studio install by itself. |
| Shuriken Link (installed for you) | A small Studio plugin for faster, more capable Studio calls | Shuriken writes it into Studio's Plugins folder and talks to it only on 127.0.0.1 with a shared key. Turn it off in Settings → Roblox & Studio if you prefer Studio's MCP server alone. |
| Claude, through Claude Code | The agents are Claude | A Claude subscription (Pro or Max) or Anthropic API access. The app bundles the Claude Code runtime (via the Claude Agent SDK) and uses the Claude Code login already on your PC, or accounts you add in Settings → Claude accounts. Agent runs use your plan's usage or your API credits. |
| Kiln (installed for you) | The 3D-modeling copilot that makes every model in your games; Shuriken docks it and sends it model briefs | Its own repository. The release installer installs it with Shuriken Studio (in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Kiln) unless a Kiln is already on the PC. Shuriken finds a running Kiln through %APPDATA%\Kiln\runtime.json and starts it when a build needs a model; without Kiln the agents fall back to Creator Store models. |
| Blender 5.2 LTS | Kiln models in it (and Shuriken's own Blender fallback uses it) | Install it from blender.org with the default options. Found in Program Files, Desktop\Blender or Steam, or set its path in Settings → 3D models & Kiln. |
| git (optional, recommended) | Project checkpoints and rollback | On PATH. |
| selene and luau-lsp (optional) | Static analysis of Luau | On PATH or in ~/.local/bin. |
| A Roblox Open Cloud API key (optional) | Uploading images, meshes, sounds, passes and products | Entered in Settings and kept encrypted on your PC (Windows DPAPI). Nothing is uploaded without one. |
Install
Download Shuriken Studio Setup <version>.exe from
shuriken.studio/apps/shuriken-studio or this repository's
Releases page. docs/SETUP.md takes you from a fresh PC to your first game.
- Install Blender 5.2 LTS for Kiln.
- Run the installer: it installs Shuriken Studio, then Kiln. It is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may
warn you: choose More info → Run anyway if you trust the release.
- Open Shuriken Studio, check Settings → Claude accounts (sign in if needed; Kiln uses the same login) and
Settings → Roblox & Studio (Studio's MCP server should show as connected), then describe a game on the start
page.
When shuriken.studio has a newer version, the app asks before updating (Update, Not now or Never ask), so a copy
you've changed is never replaced behind your back. See RELEASING.md to point it elsewhere or turn it
off.
Your data lives in %APPDATA%\Shuriken Studio (settings, accounts, logs, session journals) and your games in
Documents\Shuriken Studio\Projects by default. There is no telemetry. The app talks to Claude (your agents'
work), to Roblox (Studio on your PC; Open Cloud and thumbnails when you upload or look up assets), to Openverse
when an agent searches for sounds with free licenses, and to GitHub once to fetch luau-lsp's Roblox type
definitions.
Build from source
You need Node.js 24 or newer (npm comes with it) on Windows, plus git.
git clone <this repository's URL> shuriken-studio
cd shuriken-studio
npm ci # install exact dependencies (Electron's binary downloads on first start)
npm run typecheck # both TypeScript projects (strict)
npm test # unit and integration tests: no network, no Studio, no model calls
npm run build # compile main, preload, core and renderer into out/
Start it:
npm run dev # the app with hot reload (electron-vite)
npm run preview # or: run the production build in out/
Make the Windows installer:
npm run dist # electron-vite build + electron-builder --win --publish never
The installer and its unpacked app land in build-out/ (see RELEASING.md).
Useful environment variables for development: SHURIKEN_DATA_DIR (use a separate data folder),
SHURIKEN_PROJECTS_DIR (where new projects go), SHURIKEN_BLENDER (a Blender to use),
SHURIKEN_NO_LINK=1 (don't install the Studio plugin) and SHURIKEN_UPDATE_URL (an update feed).
Architecture in short
Electron main (src/main) ── windows, menus, crash supervisor, IPC, encrypted secrets, updater
│ MessagePort RPC + events │ contextBridge (window.shuriken)
core (src/core, utilityProcess, no Electron) renderer (src/renderer, React 19 + Tailwind 4)
├─ agents ── Claude via the Agent SDK (src/core/providers/claude)
├─ Studio link ── Studio's MCP server (stdio) and the Shuriken Link plugin (127.0.0.1)
└─ MCP tools ── Shuriken's own MCP server (127.0.0.1, bearer token) that the agents call
- Core (
src/core/) is the headless engine: projects, the task graph and orchestrator, the director,
knowledge, research, skills, verification, git checkpoints, audit and the workshops. It never imports
Electron, so it runs in an Electron utilityProcess in the app and under plain Node in the tests. Its
composition root is core.ts and its RPC surface rpc/router.ts. State is SQLite (node:sqlite) in the
data folder and in each project's .shuriken/ folder.
- Agents. Roles, their prompts and structured outputs are in
src/core/agents/roles.ts; dock copilots in
src/core/copilots/. Only src/core/providers/<id>/ knows a provider's SDK, so Claude is the first worker,
not a hard dependency. Agents report through tools and output schemas, never by parsed prose.
- Studio link.
RobloxStudioAdapter (src/core/roblox/studio-adapter.ts) is the only way Luau reaches
Studio. It uses the Shuriken Link plugin (src/core/roblox/link/) when the place is linked and Studio's
MCP server otherwise. Code lives on disk and is synced into Studio (code-sync.ts).
- MCP tools. Every agent tool is registered in the
ToolRegistry (src/core/capabilities/) with a
capability id and a permission class, and every call goes through visibility, availability, zod validation,
policy, audit and reliability checks before it runs. Agents reach the tools through Shuriken's own MCP
server (src/core/mcp/mcp-server.ts).
- Main, preload and renderer.
src/main/ supervises the cores (one per project window, restarted on a
crash) and owns the OS integration; src/preload/ is the only bridge to the UI; src/renderer/ reads
everything from the core over RPC and live events.
- Resources. Bundled agent skills (
resources/skills/<name>/SKILL.md), seed knowledge
(resources/knowledge/), the Blender bridge and exporters (resources/blender/), icon glyphs
(resources/ui-glyphs/) and a plugin example (resources/plugin-examples/).
More: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md (the full design),
docs/PLUGINS.md (extending Shuriken without changing core),
docs/SESSIONS.md (session journals for reviewing how the app behaved) and
docs/STUDIO-BACKGROUND.md (keeping Studio drawing while it is not in front).
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first: it has the layout, the rules that
keep the architecture intact and how to run the tests.
License
MIT, © 2026 The Shuriken Studio authors. Third-party components and their licenses are listed in
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
