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Unity Editor Connection

ArcaneIDE connects to the Unity Editor via a local IPC socket, giving you real-time control and log streaming without switching windows.

When ArcaneIDE starts, it opens a Unix domain socket and waits for the Unity Editor to connect. You need the Arcane Unity Plugin installed in your Unity project for the two to talk.

Once connected, a status indicator appears in the toolbar showing the connection state.

The toolbar at the top of the window contains Play, Pause, Stop, and Step buttons that send commands directly to the Unity Editor.

ButtonActionShortcut
PlayEnter Play modeCtrl+Shift+F5
PausePause executionCtrl+Shift+F6
StopExit Play modeCtrl+Shift+F10
StepAdvance one frameCtrl+Shift+F11

The toolbar also displays the current play state (Playing / Paused / Stopped).

The Unity Console panel streams log output directly from the Unity Editor in real time. It captures:

  • Debug.Log, Debug.LogWarning, and Debug.LogError messages
  • Compilation errors and warnings
  • Unhandled exceptions from scripts

The console deduplicates repeated messages and keeps up to 500 entries visible at once.

Why this matters for the AI: The console output is automatically included in the AI’s context. When a script throws a NullReferenceException, you can immediately ask the chat “Why is this error happening?” and the AI already has the stack trace — no copy-pasting required.

ArcaneIDE adds Unity-aware decorations to the Monaco editor for C# files:

  • Lifecycle method highlightingAwake, Start, Update, OnEnable, and other MonoBehaviour methods are visually distinguished
  • Serialization indicators — Fields marked [SerializeField] or public are annotated in the gutter
  • Code lens — Shows the number of references to each method inline

Right-clicking .unity, .prefab, or other asset files in the Explorer gives you extra options when connected to Unity:

  • Reveal in Unity — Selects the asset in the Unity Project window
  • Ping in Unity — Highlights the asset in the Unity Editor
  • Copy GUID — Copies the Unity GUID for use in scripts or YAML files