Installation

Install KARIANA on Windows and macOS — download the plugin zip from the dashboard, drop it into your project's Plugins folder, and enable it in UE.

KARIANA ships as an Unreal Engine 5 plugin. The current supported install path is drag-and-drop. A guided Windows installer (KarianaSetup.exe) and macOS .pkg are in active development; until they ship, follow the steps below.

Before you start

Unreal Engine 5.7 (Windows). macOS is currently held at v0.9.22 pending the v0.10.0 build.
A KARIANA account (you will be prompted to sign in on first launch).
A few hundred MB of free space — the Windows zip is roughly 100 MB extracted.

Windows — per-project install (recommended)

From your dashboard at app.kariana.ai, click Download for Windows. You will get KARIANA-v{x.y.z}.zip.
Right-click the archive and choose Extract All…. You should get a folder named KARIANA containing:
```
KARIANA/
  KARIANA.uplugin
  Binaries/
  Content/
  Source/
```
Move the entire KARIANA folder into your Unreal project under Plugins/. Create the Plugins/ folder next to your .uproject if it doesn't exist:
```
YourProject/
  YourProject.uproject
  Plugins/
    KARIANA/        ← drop the extracted folder here
```
Open the project in Unreal Engine 5.7. Go to Edit → Plugins, search for KARIANA, enable it, and restart the editor when prompted.

Windows — engine-wide install (advanced)

Use this when you want the plugin available to every UE 5.7 project on the machine without copying it into each one separately.

Locate your UE 5.7 install root — for example C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.7.

Move the extracted KARIANA folder into Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\KARIANA\. Create the Marketplace subfolder if it doesn't exist. Administrator rights are typically required to write into Program Files.

UE_5.7/
  Engine/
    Plugins/
      Marketplace/
        KARIANA/
          KARIANA.uplugin
          Binaries/
          Content/
          Source/

Open any UE 5.7 project. Edit → Plugins → KARIANA → Enable, then restart.

macOS

A native macOS build is currently held at v0.9.22 while we cut the v0.10.0 .pkg. If you need macOS access right now, contact support from your account dashboard. Once the v0.10.0 .pkg ships, this page will be updated with the per-project + engine-wide instructions.

First launch

Open any UE 5.7 project with KARIANA enabled.
In the KARIANA panel, click Sign in. A browser window opens for authentication.
Once signed in, the model list populates automatically. You are ready to start chatting.

Upgrading

Download the newer zip from the dashboard. Replace the KARIANA folder in your project's Plugins/ (or in Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\ for engine-wide) with the new one. Your sign-in and model preferences are preserved between installs because they live outside the plugin folder.
Auto-update inside the editor is planned but not yet available.

What's coming

Guided Windows installer (KarianaSetup.exe) — auto-detects your UE install, lets you pick "engine-wide" or "this project only", and runs admin-elevated where needed. In active development.
macOS .pkg — v0.10.0 build pending.
kariana-mcp CLI for Claude Desktop / external MCP setup, distributed via PyPI and npm. Source lives in this repo but the package has not yet been published; do not try pip install kariana-mcp or uvx kariana-mcp until this section is updated.

Troubleshooting

"Plugins folder doesn't exist." Create it manually next to your .uproject — UE will pick it up next time it starts.
Plugin does not appear in UE's Plugins dialog. Confirm the KARIANA folder is at <UProject>/Plugins/KARIANA/ (or Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\KARIANA\ for engine-wide), and that KARIANA.uplugin is directly inside it. If the folder ended up nested (KARIANA/KARIANA/), flatten it.
UE rebuilds modules every launch. Make sure you copied the Binaries\Win64\ files from the zip — they ship pre-built. If Binaries/ is missing or empty, UE will treat it as a source plugin and try to compile from Source/, which fails without a configured C++ toolchain.
Permission denied installing engine-wide. Run File Explorer as Administrator before moving the folder into Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.7\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\.

For anything not listed here, see Troubleshooting or contact support.

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