Unity AI Open Beta: How to get started
Unity AI is your in-editor AI assistant – built for game development, grounded in your project. In this blog post series, we’ll introduce key features and workflows available to you in the Unity AI Open Beta, starting with this general overview of what’s included and how to sign up.
Unity AI is now in open beta for Unity 6. It is the first in-editor AI suite built specifically for game development workflows – not a general-purpose chatbot bolted onto the side of the editor, but an agent that understands your project's scene graph, GameObjects, components, packages, and target platform in real time.
In this post, we walk through everything that shipped in the open beta: Unity AI Assistant and its three modes (Ask, Plan, and Agent), the MCP Server, the Unity AI Gateway, and the Generators. We also cover how to install Unity AI and start your free trial.
What is Unity AI?
Unity AI is an in-Editor suite of AI tools built into Unity 6, powered by third-party frontier models. It draws on Unity documentation and best practices, and it reads the live context of your active project – so answers and generated code are more relevant to what you are actually building, not a generic Unity project.
Unity AI is not Unity Muse. Muse was a separate, deprecated tool that used Unity first-party models. Unity AI is a new product with a fundamentally different architecture: it runs inside the Editor, is designed for agentic workflows, and allows you to work with industry leading models via Unity Cloud.
The open beta ships with three core components:
- Unity AI Assistant – an in-editor agent for writing code, building scenes, and answering questions about your project
- Unity AI Gateway – a secure bridge for connecting your own preferred AI tools (Claude, GPT, and others) directly into the Editor
- Unity MCP Server – Unity's official Model Context Protocol server, which lets AI agents in your IDE read and get full context on your Unity project before making any changes
The Unity AI Assistant
The Unity AI Assistant is the primary interface and available as a chat panel inside the Unity Editor. It operates in three modes depending on the complexity and autonomy you need.
Ask mode
Ask mode is the starting point for most interactions. Use it to ask questions about Unity, get explanations for console errors, understand how a specific component works, or look up best practices. The Assistant draws on Unity's documentation and the context of your active project to give specific, relevant answers.
Example prompts in Ask mode:
- “Why is my Rigidbody passing through the floor?”
- “What is the difference between FixedUpdate and Update?”
- “How do I set up a NavMesh for my current scene?”
Ask mode
Ask mode is the starting point for most interactions. Use it to ask questions about Unity, get explanations for console errors, understand how a specific component works, or look up best practices. The Unity AI Assistant draws on Unity's documentation and the context of your active project to give specific, relevant answers.
Example prompts in Ask mode:
- “Why is my Rigidbody passing through the floor?”
- “What is the difference between FixedUpdate and Update?”
- “How do I set up a NavMesh for my current scene?”
Plan mode
Plan mode helps you simplify complex tasks by breaking them into smaller steps. Instead of a single answer, the Unity AI Assistant produces a structured plan for a multi-step task – listing what it intends to do before taking any action. This gives you the chance to review, adjust, and approve before anything changes in your project.
Plan mode is useful for tasks like refactoring a system, setting up a new feature from scratch, or reorganizing scene hierarchy – situations where you want visibility into the approach, so you can make an informed decision before execution.
Agent mode
Agent mode gives the Unity AI Assistant the autonomy to execute tasks end to end. It can write C# scripts, modify scene components, create prefabs, and verify that changes behave as intended – all in a single workflow. Every change made by the Unity AI Assistant is reversible: it allows you to undo steps, and AI-generated assets are tagged with embedded metadata so they are easy to identify and review.
You also control how much autonomy you want your agent to have. Permissions are configurable, so you can restrict the Unity AI Assistant to read-only context queries, allow it to write scripts but not modify scenes, or give it full autonomy for rapid prototyping.
Unity MCP Server and Unity AI Gateway
Unity AI also opens up two integration paths for developers who want to connect external tools to the Unity Editor.
Unity MCP Server
The Unity MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server lets AI agents running in your IDE – such as Claude in VS Code, Cursor, or other MCP-compatible tools – connect directly to your Unity project's runtime context. Without MCP, an external AI assistant only sees your code files. With MCP, it can inspect scene state, read GameObjects and their components, check console logs, and trigger Editor actions. It even gives you project settings context.
Unity's official MCP Server is more performant than open-source alternatives and requires no credits to use – it is included in all Unity Pro, Enterprise, and Industry subscriptions, and available to Personal users on a free trial.
Unity AI Gateway
The Unity AI Gateway lets you bring your own model subscriptions into the Editor. If your studio already pays for Claude, GPT-4o, or another frontier model, you can route that directly through the Gateway without consuming any Unity AI credits. The Gateway is designed for teams who want to centralize model access, apply usage controls, and maintain security and auditability for all AI interactions inside Unity.
Unity AI Gateway lets you connect your existing models without using Unity AI credits. It’s included with Unity Pro, Enterprise, and Industry plans. Developers on Unity Personal can access AI Gateway with a free trial.
Generators
Unity AI includes a set of asset generators that convert design references and text prompts into high-quality placeholder assets. In the open beta, Generators can produce:
- 2D sprites, textures, and placeholder art from text descriptions
- Scene layouts from image references or design mockups
- Animations or audio from descriptive prompts
All generated assets are tagged with embedded metadata flagging them as AI-generated. Developers are responsible for managing app store declarations and verifying usage rights for generated content. Generators can be disabled entirely in the Unity Dashboard if needed – granular controls are available so you can keep the Assistant active while turning off generation.
Getting started with Unity AI
Setup takes under 10 minutes. Here’s how to set up Unity AI in your project:
1. Install Unity 6 or newer
Unity AI requires Unity 6.0+. Download the latest version from the Unity Hub or the release archive at unity.com/download.
2. Link your project to Unity Cloud
Open the Unity Dashboard and create or link a cloud project. Unity AI requires cloud connectivity for your project to function.
3. Install the AI packages
Click the AI button in the Editor toolbar. You will be prompted to install the Assistant package. If you cannot see the button, follow the installation steps in the Unity AI documentation to install via the Package Manager.
4. Start your free trial
Unity Personal users get 1,000 credits free for 14 days. Pro, Enterprise, and Industry users have Unity AI access included in their existing subscriptions – simply install the package and sign in.
5. Start building
Open the Assistant panel, pick a mode, and type your first prompt. A good starting point: ask it to explain your current scene structure, or generate a simple player controller script.
More on Unity AI
If you’re interested in reading more about what’s available in the Unity AI Open Beta, we invite you to read other articles in this ongoing series:
Try Unity AI today
Unity AI open beta is available now for all Unity 6 developers. Sign up for a free trial, explore the Unity AI Assistant, connect your preferred tools via the Unity AI Gateway, and start experimenting with what your development workflow looks like with a project-aware AI agent built in.
Sign up and learn more about plans, pricing, and data privacy at unity.com/features/ai
Full documentation is available in the Unity AI docs linked from the Editor or at docs.unity3d.com.
Unity AI Assistant is currently in open beta. As such, features, behavior, and availability described in this post are under active development and may change, be limited, or be discontinued without notice.