UE5 CLI

Unreal Engine 5 Command Line Interface

This is a command line interface for Unreal Engine 5, designed to simplify the process of building and packaging projects. It provides a set of commands that can be used to automate common tasks, such as building, packaging, and launching projects.

This is very similar to Adam Rehn's ue4 cli, but built with GO as to avoid Python dependencies and to provide a more robust solution.

Installation

Prerequisites: Go 1.24+.

From the repo root:

go install .

This installs the ue5 binary to $(go env GOPATH)/bin (or $(go env GOBIN) if set). Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

Install from GitHub release (no repo clone)

1. Go to the project GitHub Releases page and download the asset for your OS/arch.
2. Extract it (if it is a .zip or .tar.gz).
3. Make it executable and move it onto your PATH:

chmod +x ue5
mv ue5 /usr/local/bin/ue5

Usage

UE5 CLI is a command line tool to help build and package Unreal Engine 5 projects.

Usage:
  ue5 [flags]
  ue5 [command]

Available Commands:
  build       Build your Project
  clean       Removes cache and intermediate files from the project
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  gen         Generate project files for your Unreal Engine Project
  help        Help about any command
  package     Package your Unreal Engine project for shipping

Flags:
  -d, --debug            Enable debug logging
  -h, --help             help for ue5
  -p, --project string   Path to the project directory (default: current directory)

Use "ue5 [command] --help" for more information about a command.

How it works

This CLI looks at your current directory and searches for a .uproject file. If it finds one, it will use that as the project to run commands on. This can be overridden by using the -p or --project flag to specify a different project directory.

This CLI then runs the same commands that you would run but auto calculates the paths to the engine based on your UProject version and the Unreal Engines installed via your Epic Games Launcher manifests.

Thus with multiple versions of Unreal Engine installed, you can run commands on any project without having to specify the engine version or path.

Server Mode

The CLI includes a Server Mode that runs a background daemon to manage Unreal Editor instances. Features include:

• Editor lifecycle management: Start, stop, and monitor editor instances
• Log capture and querying: All editor stdout/stderr captured, filterable by level, category, pattern
• AI-driven rebuilds: Trigger rebuilds with descriptive labels, choose full or hot reload mode
• Build metadata: Track accumulated features across builds, query build history
• Multi-agent coordination: Multiple AI agents work concurrently with automatic build coalescing
• MCP integration: Push notifications to connected AI agents via SSE (port 9515)

ue5 server start                              # Start the daemon
ue5 server run --wait --timeout 120s --json  # Launch editor and wait for running state
ue5 server rebuild --label "Added feature" --mode full  # Trigger rebuild
ue5 server build-info --json                  # Query build metadata
ue5 server logs --level error --since 5m      # Query captured logs
ue5 server agents --json                      # List registered AI agents

See ue5 server --help for all available subcommands.

Dashboard

The daemon ships a web dashboard that shows real-time build status, editor instances, and connected AI agents. It starts automatically with the daemon on port 9516 (override with the UE5_DASHBOARD_PORT environment variable).

Key features:

• Live updates via Server-Sent Events (SSE) — no polling required
• Trigger rebuilds and start/stop the editor directly from the UI

Development — run the Vite dev server with hot reload (proxies API requests to the Go backend on :9516):

cd dashboard && npm run dev

Production — embed the compiled frontend into the Go binary:

scripts/build-dashboard.sh