Claude Code + Board Game Arena: BGA Development Skill

A Claude Code skill for developing board games on Board Game Arena Studio — from published rules to a playable game.

Read the write-up → Implementing a board game on BGA with Claude Code

Distributed as both a Claude Code plugin and a Vercel skills package — pick whichever fits your setup.

Install

Option A — Claude Code plugin (recommended)

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add rbellec/claude-code-bga
/plugin install board-game-arena@claude-code-bga

Option B — npx skills

From your project (or anywhere with -g for global):

npx skills add rbellec/claude-code-bga -a claude-code

Option C — Manual copy

git clone https://github.com/rbellec/claude-code-bga.git
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
ln -s "$PWD/claude-code-bga/skills/board-game-arena" ~/.claude/skills/board-game-arena

Getting started

1. Install Claude in Chrome — needed for the automated test loop on BGA Studio.
2. Have your BGA Studio account ready — game registered, SSH key configured (BGA docs).
3. Start Claude Code in your project directory and tell it what you want to build:

   I want to implement [GAME NAME] on BGA Studio.
   Here are the rules: [paste rules or link to rulebook]
   My BGA username is [USERNAME] and the game name is [GAMENAME].
   

Claude Code will use the skill to handle the BGA-specific setup (Makefile, config files, state machine, deploy workflow) and the browser extension to test directly on BGA Studio.

Optional: PHP code quality loop (advanced)

If you're comfortable with PHP tooling, the skill includes an optional quality loop wiring PHP-CS-Fixer, Rector, PHPStan (level max), and PHPMD as a read-only make audit target you run before committing (an opt-in pre-commit hook is available). ~10 s per run, installed once into a shared ~/.bga-tools/ toolbox. See references/php-code-quality.md for the full setup. Skip this if you're not comfortable installing PHP dev tools — the skill works fine without it.

Optional: skip permission prompts for git/make/scp

The skill commits automatically at each milestone and deploys via scp/make. To avoid confirmation prompts, add to your .claude/settings.local.json (not committed):

{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": ["Bash(git *)", "Bash(make *)", "Bash(scp *)"]
  }
}

What the skill covers

• Project scaffolding (Makefile, directory structure, config files)
• BGA new framework patterns (PHP 8.4, state classes, notifications, globals)
• JavaScript client structure (ES6 modules, state handlers)
• BGA library references — detailed guides for Deck, BgaCards, Stock, Counter, Scrollmap, and 10 other BGA framework libraries, loaded on demand to keep context usage low (see skills/board-game-arena/references/)
• Optional PHP code quality loop — PHP-CS-Fixer, Rector, PHPStan (level max), PHPMD wired as make audit. See references/php-code-quality.md.
• Automated deploy-test loop via Chrome extension
• Known BGA pitfalls and how to avoid them (SQL comments, table names, DB query gotchas)

See TECHNICAL_NOTES.md for the why behind each rule.

What you still need to do yourself

• Create the BGA Studio account and register your game
• Set up the SSH key for SFTP access (can take up to 1h to propagate)
• Manually quit stuck game tables when BGA's UI requires it
• Reconnect the Chrome extension if it drops
• Review the generated code — it's an alpha, not production-ready

Games built with this skill

• Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe — quantum superposition mechanics, entanglement graph, cycle detection
• Go On Rasalva — tile placement, resource management
• Visite Royale / Royal Visit — card game, tug-of-war mechanics (repo will be made public once the publisher license is granted)
• Duelly — adaptation in progress
• Renartefact — adaptation in progress

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.