Enter the moves.
Keep the ideas.
Play a line out on a board, save it as a study with every variation and comment intact, and share it with the people you actually analyse with.
Free to start · Google, Apple or email · No clocks, no ratings
Moves
- 1.e4e5
- 2.Nf3Nc6
- 3.Bc4d6
- 4.Nc3Bg4
- 5.Nxe5Bxd1
- 6.Bxf7+Ke7
- 7.Nd5#
Legal-move entry
SAN, UCI or drag
Real variation tree
Branch anywhere
Comments & NAGs
!, ?, !!, ?!
Share by link
Or invite by email
Everything a study needs, nothing it doesn't
Chess Labs is built around one loop: enter moves, save them, share them. No clocks, no matchmaking, no ratings.
Move entry that pushes back
Drag a piece or type the move in SAN or UCI. Illegal moves are refused, promotion and castling and en passant all behave, and check and mate are detected as you go.
A real move tree
Branch anywhere into an unlimited variation, promote or demote a line, delete from a move onward, and annotate with comments and NAGs — !, ?, !!, ??, !? and ?!.
PGN and FEN, both directions
Paste a PGN, drop a .pgn file, set a starting FEN, or pull a game straight from the public Lichess API. Export a single study or a whole collection back out again.
Share by link
Give a study an unguessable share link and send it to anyone. Public and unlisted studies open in a read-only viewer — board, move list and metadata, no account needed.
Share with people
Invite someone by email as a viewer or a collaborator. Collaborators add variations and comments to your study; viewers read it and nothing more.
A library you can navigate
Group studies into collections, search and filter by opening, players, result or date, and pick up the last thing you had open.
From a move to a shared study
Enter the moves
Play the line out on the board, or paste a PGN and start from there. Every legal move is accepted; nothing else is.
Save it as a study
Give it a title, players, event and result. The whole tree — main line, variations, comments and NAGs — is saved as PGN.
Share it
Publish a share link anyone can open read-only, or invite a specific player by email as a viewer or a collaborator.
Frequently asked questions
No. Chess Labs is not a playing server and has no clocks, pairings or matchmaking. It is a board you enter moves on, a place to save those moves as a study, and a way to share that study with someone else.
No. Ratings are not part of the product. You can import a game from the public Lichess API to study it, but nothing about your rating history is stored or charted.
They are kept. A study is stored as PGN, which carries the full move tree — main line, every variation, comments and NAGs — so what you export is what you entered.
Only who you decide. A private study is visible to you alone. An unlisted or public one gets an unguessable link that opens a read-only viewer. Sharing by email adds one person as a viewer (read-only) or a collaborator (may add variations and comments).
Always. Export a single study or an entire collection as PGN, the same format every other chess tool reads.
Start your first study
Sign in with Google, Apple or an email address, open a board, and write down the line you have been meaning to work out.
Google · Apple · Email and password