Great questions!
1. Yes, it works 100% locally with no cloud or subscription needed. The MCP server and Godot plugin run entirely on your machine. However, you still need an AI client to send the commands — Godot MCP Pro is the bridge between the AI and the editor, not the AI itself. For local LLMs like Gemma4, you'd use something like LM Studio or Ollama + OpenCode/Continue as the AI client. With an RTX 5090 you have plenty of power for that. Use `--minimal` mode (35 tools) to keep the context small for local models.
2. No, there's no chat panel inside Godot. You chat with the AI in your AI client (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, etc.) and it controls Godot through the MCP connection. Think of it as: you talk to the AI in one window, and it makes changes in the Godot editor in real time.
3. Yes, that kind of natural language prompt absolutely works! The AI translates your description into the actual Godot operations. Your laser example would work — the AI would create a scene, set up the icon.png as a sprite, write the WASD movement script, add the shooting mechanic with laser.png, and wire up spacebar input. You don't need to know GDScript — that's the whole point.
That said, the quality of results depends on the AI model. Larger cloud models (Claude, GPT) will understand your intent better than smaller local models. With Gemma4 26B/31B you might need to be a bit more specific in your descriptions, but it should still work for basic game mechanics.
Feel free to join our Discord if you have more questions or need help setting up: https://discord.gg/zJ2u5zNUBZ