## Creating a homemade engine As an alternative to creating an entire chess engine and implementing one of the communication protocols (`UCI` or `XBoard`), a bot can also be created by writing a single class with a single method. The `search()` method in this new class takes the current board and the game clock as arguments and should return a move based on whatever criteria the coder desires. Steps to create a homemade bot: 1. Do all the steps in the [How to Install](./How-to-Install) 2. In the `config.yml`, change the engine protocol to `homemade` 3. Create a class in `homemade.py` that extends `MinimalEngine`. 4. Create a method called `search()` with an argument `board` that chooses a legal move from the board. - There are examples in `homemade.py` to help you get started. These examples show different ways to implement the `search()` method and the proper way to return the chosen move. 5. In the `config.yml`, change the name from `engine_name` to the name of your class - In this case, you could change it to: `name: "RandomMove"`