Hosted Minecraft, with a companion

Play Minecraft with an AI friend who builds anything you ask.

Cog is an AI teammate who lives on your own Minecraft server. Ask in the chat for a build or a game, or take them down a mine with you.

Invited trials · 14 days · No card required

Meet Cog Joins your world as a player

Java 1.21.4 + Bedrock beta No client mods for Cog

Whitelisted Only the players you name

Three regions US, Europe or Australia

One take, no cuts

Six things, from six sentences.

Each build in this film started as one line typed into the chat, and the line is on screen as you fly over it. Stay for the treehouse, which goes up from bare ground while you watch.

One village, a few requests

From a patch of grass to a ferris wheel.

Scroll, and watch it go up one request at a time.

Somewhere to start

An empty world, and Cog.

Nothing built yet. Some grass, and Cog standing on it, waiting to be asked.

Ask for something

"Build me a road to the village."

Cog walks out and does it. You stand there and watch the blocks go down one after another, until there is a road where the grass was.

Ask for more

Then houses, a well and a field of wheat.

The windows light up when it gets dark, water runs down the middle of the wheat, and there are lamps along the road because Cog thought you would want them.

Ask for something silly

A ferris wheel that actually turns.

There is a lever at the bottom. Flip it and the whole wheel goes round, and the seats stay level all the way over the top.

Then they check

Cog checks their own work.

When Cog finishes, they go back over the build and count what is there. If a wall has a hole in it, they say so. Ask them to fix it, or undo the build and try something else.

Road's done. Runs the whole way, no gaps.
Wheel turns. Seats stay level over the top.
The lever works. Go and pull it.

Made on request

Six builds, each from one line in the chat.

Every one of them is standing in a world, not sitting in a schematic file waiting to be imported. Drag any of them to turn it round.

A stone dragon on an outcrop

"Wings folded, head up, mouth open."

30,719 blocks

A pirate galleon, out at sea

"Cannons run out, flag up top."

30,263 blocks

A treehouse village up a giant oak

"Rope bridges between the huts."

35,252 blocks · you can go inside

A windmill with sails that turn

"And I want the sails to actually go round."

24,638 blocks

A frog mansion you can walk inside

"With rooms and floors inside it."

23,311 blocks · you can go inside

A wizard’s tower with a spiral stair

"Put a library in it and a stair all the way up."

14,212 blocks

See every build, and the games →

Getting started

Three steps to a world of your own.

  1. 1

    Start your invited trial

    Pick Paper with Cog, a region and your Minecraft Java profile. First setup takes a few minutes, and the dashboard shows how far along it is. No port forwarding, no client mods.

  2. 2

    Tell Cog what you want

    In the chat box, in your own words. "Build a lighthouse on that headland." "Make us a soccer game." Cog asks if something is unclear, and then gets on with it.

  3. 3

    Send your mates the address

    They open the copy of Minecraft they already own and join. No mod and no special launcher. The beta player list fits you and up to four friends; friends do not need a Cubelings subscription.

See what happens in between →

Make it yours

A small world, with your people in it.

The dashboard keeps the address, the player list and the feedback button in one place.

Name your world

Give it a name, and pick a friendly address at setup. During the beta, players connect with the address shown in your dashboard.

Choose your people

The trial player list fits you and up to four friends. Add their Java names or Xbox gamertags in the dashboard; each plays on their own account.

Help shape Cog

Tell us what Cog got wrong, or what you wish they did. The feedback button in the dashboard comes straight to us, and we reply there.

Inventions

Invent things Minecraft has never seen.

Put two or three things on a crafting table. When no recipe in the game fits, the table offers to invent something new: a tool, a vehicle, a companion. It is tested on a real Minecraft server before it reaches you, and once it exists, anyone can make it.

Nothing new to learn

An ordinary crafting table, two or three items, and “Nobody has made this. Invent it!”

Tested before it is yours

A test pilot flies it on a real server. If it does not do what it says, it does not ship.

First to invent it

The first inventor gets the patent, and inventions can go back on the table to make rarer ones.

How inventions work →Safety, for parents

Who it is for

Four people we built it for.

The one with the ideas

Who wants a pirate galleon, a working rollercoaster and a canyon with a waterfall down it, and is not going to spend a fortnight placing blocks one at a time to find out whether it was worth building.

The group of mates

Who want one world that nobody has to host on their own machine or pay for alone, and that has something new in it when they log on.

Whoever ends up running it

Who is tired of being the server admin: the version arguments, the plugin that broke, the nine o'clock message saying it is down. Nothing here needs administering.

The parent paying for it

Who wants a safe Minecraft server for their kid and not a public one. This world is whitelisted: you add their friends by name, no stranger can find it, and Cog is built to refuse anything they should not build, however it is asked. What Cog will and will not do →

For purists

"An AI building it for you ruins Minecraft."

Some players mean that, and for them it is true. If placing the blocks is the part you came for, a builder has nothing to give you. Choose hosting-only Fabric when your invitation offers it, and never speak to Cog. In survival Cog cannot shortcut anything anyway: they walk there, mine it, craft it and take the hits, the same as you.

And the nine-year-old asking for a dragon castle was never going to spend a fortnight on WorldEdit to get one. Nothing was taken off them. They described it, and then they got to watch it go up.

The long answer, including where we agree →

Pricing

14 days free, then from US$14 a month.

Invited testers get one world for 14 days without a card. Friends on your player list join with their own Minecraft accounts, on Java or Bedrock. Prices are in US dollars; Australian customers pay GST on top.

See what is in each plan →

What you can ask for

Nine things they will do without being told twice.

You ask the way you would ask a friend, and Cog does it while you watch.

Your world

It is still there when you get back.

Your world runs on a hosted Minecraft server, not on anyone's laptop. Once the last player leaves, it saves and sleeps after five minutes. The next person to connect wakes it, and it is exactly where you left it: mid-build, mid-farm.

Cog runs on the server too and joins as a player, so nobody installs anything to see them work.

How your world is hosted →

No waiting around

New things appear while you are standing there.

On most servers, adding anything new means everyone gets thrown out while it restarts. Here, five people stand in a field while a pitch, two goals, floodlights and a lit scoreboard arrive around them. A moment later the same five, on the same spots, are playing on it. Nobody reconnected or installed anything.

1,641ms the slowest of 6 games, from "make us a game" to its rules running in the world, with nobody kicked
21s for a deeper change that needs one restart, from writing it to running it, restart included

See a game they wrote, and take a shot at the goal →

Creative 0 blocks · a town in seconds Survival 0 blocks · chopped, carried, laid one at a time

Two ways to play

Cog can conjure it, or they can go and earn it.

On the left, creative: a whole street goes up in the time it takes to say what you want. On the right, survival, on the same clock. Cog walks to a tree, swings an axe until it comes down, carries the wood back and lays it. The cottage is still four courses short when the town is finished, and nothing on that side is sped up.

Creative

Places blocks directly, with no gathering, crafting or travel. Use it for a village, a road across the map or a ferris wheel that has to turn: builds where the finished thing is the point.

Survival

Cog gathers, crafts and mines under the same rules you do, and can come back with less than they hoped for. They fight when something attacks, back off when they are hurt, and leave ore alone when their pickaxe would only destroy it.

Compare the two modes in detail →

Building

Roads that bend round the hill instead of over it.

The route reads the ground it crosses. It widens at corners so the shoulder does not look like a trench, and it bridges water instead of stopping dead at the bank.

Structures are placed block by block from a plain-English description. There is no schematic file to prepare and no command to type.

See a road get built, then audited →

"cobblestone road from the well to the farm, three wide"

  • route bridges the stream, no dead ends
  • width 3, shoulders graded at corners
  • fence one cell outside the road, never doubled
  • lighting placed as it goes

Things that move

A secret door with real pistons behind it.

Ask for a secret door and you get a real one: sticky pistons, wire and a lever, laid block by block the way you would lay it yourself. Flip the lever and a solid wall slides across the doorway. Flip it back and the doorway is there again.

Redstone is where most builders come unstuck, human or AI. One wrong block kills the whole circuit. Put through a standard redstone benchmark, the best AI models got it right about a quarter of the time.

Other AI, working the wiring out from scratch
on the standard redstone benchmark
~26%

So Cog does not work the wiring out on the spot. They build from circuits that have already been made and tested, which is why the lever does what a lever should. How Cog checks their own work →

Click the pitch to take a shot

New rules, while you are standing in it

Ask for a game and you get a playable one.

Ask for soccer and Cog lays the pitch (markings, centre circle, goal frames in red and blue glass, a pad at each end), then writes the rules that make it a game. Stand on your team's pad and it hands you snowballs and a bit of speed. Put one through the goal mouth and the score goes up, the whistle goes, and everyone gets told. First to five and the fireworks go off.

Then it goes into the running server. Nobody is kicked, nothing restarts, no plugin gets installed, and your friends carry on playing the ordinary game they already own. 1.6 seconds ago the server did not know how to play soccer, and now it does.

1,641ms from "make us a soccer game" to nine rules live on the server, and every one of those nine was then triggered on purpose to check it fires. Across six games, all 67 of 67 rules fired.

Take a shot at the goal →

Checking the work

Cog owns up when they get it wrong.

When Cog finishes a build, they walk back over it, count what is actually there and tell you in the chat. You get the numbers they found, not just "done".

CogRoad's finished. 357 columns, all one connected piece, no holes in it, and nothing along it you can't walk straight up.

CogWheel's up. All 92 parts, and every seat is exactly twelve blocks out from the middle. I measured them rather than trusting the drawing.

CogHouse is done, and you can get inside it. I know because I walked in: sixteen blocks past the wall, standing in the middle of him.

So you do not find out on Saturday that the bridge you crossed on Tuesday had a gap in the middle of it.

See exactly what they check →

Actual transcript, unedited

go mine me some iron

I'm heading down to mine some iron! Should be back up in a couple minutes with the ore.

what are you up to?

I was just about to head underground to mine iron! Want me to grab anything else while I'm down there?

Done! I mined 1 iron ore from Y:56 and made it back safely — found 4 total but only had room for 1.

The last line arrived on its own, two minutes later.

An AI player, in the world with you

Ask Cog what they are up to.

Cog joins the world as a player and behaves like one. They talk back, follow you if you ask, and answer in their own words rather than from a list of canned lines.

Ask them for something that takes a while and they say so straight away, then come back and tell you when the job is actually done.

refused

Your world, your rules

A private Minecraft server, whitelisted to the people you name.

Your world is on no public server list, so nobody finds it and nobody wanders in. Cog is built to refuse anything inappropriate, and to keep refusing when a different player asks or the request is reworded. Cog will not wreck someone else's build, tells you what they did after every job, and anything they build can be undone in one command.

Is it safe for kids? →

Early access

Be in the first worlds.

We are opening a small number of worlds first. Put your name down and we will send one email, when yours is ready.

Questions

Straight answers.

Including what the beta does not do yet, kept in one list.

What does it cost?

Invited testers get 14 days without a card. Paid plans start at US$14 a month (plus GST in Australia), with up to 5, 15 or 25 players and a monthly AI allowance. The trial supports you and up to four friends, each with their own Minecraft: Java Edition on a computer, or Bedrock on a phone, tablet or Windows PC (beta).

Is it safe for kids, and safe to leave running?

The world is whitelisted: you name the players who can join, and it is on no public server list for anybody else to find. Cog has safety controls, but AI can make mistakes. We recommend adult supervision for children, and the Safety page explains the controls and their limits.

Does Cog play with us, or only build?

Both. Cog joins your world as a player, so they can follow you, mine with you, fight what attacks you and answer in the chat while they do it. In survival they play by the rules you play by. Ask them for a game and they write one you can all play together.

Is using an AI in Minecraft cheating?

In creative, placing blocks straight down is what creative mode is for. In survival Cog plays by your rules: they walk there, mine the iron, craft at a table and take the damage, with nothing spawned in. If you would rather have no AI at all, a hosting-only Fabric trial is available when your invitation offers it.

Can we make it ours?

You name your world and choose who can join. The companion is Cog, with Cog’s look and manner; custom names, skins and personality are not settings in the beta.

Do my friends need to install anything?

No mods. They open Minecraft the way they always do, on Java or on Bedrock, and add your world as a server. If that is new to them, our joining guide shows every step with pictures. Cog runs on the server, not on anyone’s computer.

Do I need to know anything technical?

No. There is no server to set up, no port forwarding and no config file. Once invited, you choose a server type and region and the dashboard shows setup progress. On Paper with Cog, you then ask for things in the Minecraft chat.

How long does Cog take?

A road or a house goes up in seconds while you stand there. Something they have to design from scratch, like a dragon or a house shaped like a cartoon character, takes a few minutes of thinking and then goes up in seconds. A second copy of something they have already made takes about three seconds.

What if they build it wrong?

Cog tells you. When they finish, they check their own work and report what they found, including when it did not go to plan. Anything they build can be undone.

Does Cog cheat?

Only if you want them to. In creative they place things instantly, which is handy when you have asked for a castle. In survival they play by the same rules you do: they have to go and find the wood, and sometimes they come back with less than they hoped.

Which games can I use it with?

Minecraft: Java Edition 1.21.4 today, and Minecraft Bedrock on iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows in beta. Consoles cannot join yet. Other games are on our wishlist.

A place in the first worlds

What will you
make of it?

Cubelings is an invite-only Minecraft beta. Tell us what you would build first, and we’ll email you when a place opens.

14 days when invitedNo card required

A place on the list, not a subscription. Your trial starts only when you’re invited and begin setup.

Just the details we need to invite you. How we handle your details