There's something clarifying about working under extreme constraints like this. When you only have 2KB, you're forced to discover what the irreducible core of chess actually is — which pieces matter most, what evaluation heuristics survive compression, what you can get away with not implementing.

Yes, it's missing castling/en passant/promotion, but as a study in "what does a chess engine actually need to play reasonable chess," this is fascinating. The answer turns out to be: surprisingly little.

Would love to see a breakdown of where those 2KB are spent. How much is move generation vs evaluation vs search?