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Rules

Last edited by David Bloomin · ·

Rules

Four isolated lanes

num_agents is 4, and seat s plays a complete PRIVATE instance of the same seeded gauntlet. Every generator draw is mix64(seed, phaseIndex, salt) and the lane index is not an input, so all four lanes hold byte-identical layouts, missions and rule tables. stepLane is a pure function of one lane's own state and that lane's own primitive: nothing crosses a lane — no position, no say, no score, no scoreboard.

The gauntlet and the clock

  • Tick — one primitive action by one lane's agent.
  • turnTicks = 24 — every command turn executes at most twenty-four primitives per lane.
  • taskTurnCap = 6 turns per phase ⇒ at most 144 ticks per phase per lane.
  • taskCount = 5 phases per episode ⇒ maxTurns = 30, maxTicks = 720.
  • Phases run strictly in the variant's declared order, one at a time, and their boundaries are synchronised across all four lanes: every lane starts phase k on the same turn. The seat is told the family and the mission of the current phase only.
  • A lane whose phase finishes (solved, died, crashed) stops stepping for the rest of the turn and idles — no LLM call, no ticks — until every lane has resolved the phase. Turns saved this way are not transferable, but finishing early still pays: speed is scored per lane.

The ladder of families is public (below). The layouts are seeded and never disclosed: the episode seed never appears in any observation or prompt, and the seat never sees an unobserved cell, a future task, an xland rule table, or any layout parameter.

Turn resolution order

  1. If every lane has resolved the current phase, record it and advance ALL FOUR lanes to the next together. If there is no next phase, end the episode.
  2. For each lane in ascending seat index, recompute its 7 × 7 visible set and merge it into that lane's known map.
  3. Issue ONE batch carrying one request per active seat — an active seat is one whose lane has not resolved the phase (attempt-1 deadline attempt1Ms = 18 s). Seats are never queried sequentially.
  4. Every seat that timed out, errored, returned non-JSON or returned no usable actions is retried once, again as a single batch (retryMs = 12 s). The ladder is sized off the CONCURRENT-BATCH p90 — a batch of three measured p90 8.6–10.1 s against a single call's 6.0 s — never off a right-censored maximum. The worst case is bounded by the budget guard, not by arithmetic: it lets no turn start after 578 s, so 578 + 30 + 21 = 629 s sits inside the 660 s stop.
  5. Still nothing → the scout scripted plan is computed server-side for that lane and a fallback record is written with the TRUE cause.
  6. Validate and expand each seat's plan against its own lane's known map, in the order the reply lists it: entries past maxActionsPerTurn = 24 are dropped and counted; an entry that does not validate is dropped, never rewritten; macros expand against the known map as of turn start, each yielding at most macroPrimitiveCap = 40 primitives; the whole queue is truncated to 24.
  7. Each seat's say (≤ 140 runes) and notes (≤ 300 runes) are sanitised on rune boundaries and written as that seat's directive replay record.
  8. turnSpacingMs = 11 s is a floor on the wall clock between BATCH starts.

Tick resolution order

  1. tick += 1; taskTick += 1.
  2. Pop the next primitive. An empty queue is a real wait — the tick is spent.
  3. Apply the primitive:
    • left — dir = (dir + 3) mod 4; right — dir = (dir + 1) mod 4.
    • forward — an obstacle ahead ends the task crashed and no move happens; otherwise the agent moves into the cell if it is passable.
    • pickup — empty-handed, and the cell ahead holds a non-obstacle key/ball/box.
    • drop — carrying something, and the cell ahead is empty floor.
    • toggle — a closed door opens; an open door closes; a locked door opens iff a key of the same colour is carried (the key is not consumed); a box is replaced by its contents.
    • wait — nothing happens.
  4. Obstacles move (dynamic only). An obstacle NEVER moves into the agent's cell: a cog is only ever killed by a forward it chose.
  5. Production rules fire (xland only), at most one per tick, scanning cells in ascending (y, x) and neighbours east/south/west/north.
  6. Task termination, in this order: on lava → died; success → solved; taskTick == 132 → timeout.
  7. Recompute visibility, merge, then evaluate the three subgoal predicates. A predicate that first becomes true awards its credit permanently.
  8. Mix the tick into gameHash.
  9. If the task finished at step 6, break out of the tick loop.

Visibility

viewSize = 7. The view box is the 7 × 7 square with the agent at view coordinate (3, 6) looking toward decreasing j. A cell is visible iff the restated MiniGrid occlusion flood marks it; seesBehind is false for wall, closed door and locked door. A cell never in vis stays ?. A cell observed and later left behind keeps its last observed content — so a remembered obstacle position goes stale, and the seat is told how stale (seen_tick).

The seven task families

  1. lavagap — "get to the green goal square". A lava column at gapX ∈ 4…8 with one gap at gapY ∈ 1…11. Subgoals: the gap has entered the view; agent.x > gapX; success.
  2. doorkey — "use the yellow key to open the door and then get to the green goal square". A full-height wall with one locked yellow door; the yellow key is west of it, the goal east. Subgoals: carried the key; the door became open; success.
  3. multiroom — "get to the green goal square". Walls at x = 6 and y = 6; three closed doors on the 0→1, 1→2 and 2→3 boundaries only, so the only route is 0 → 1 → 2 → 3. Subgoals: entered room 1; entered room 2; success.
  4. keycorridor — "pick up the blue ball". Three side rooms; one has a locked red door and the blue ball, the red key is in another. Subgoals: carried the key; the door became open; success.
  5. dynamic — "get to the green goal square without touching a grey ball". Six moving grey balls. Subgoals: Manhattan distance to the goal has been ≤ 12; ≤ 6; success.
  6. babyai — six uniquely-identified objects and one of three instructions: go to the …, pick up the …, put the … next to the …. "Next to" requires both objects uncarried on 4-adjacent cells.
  7. xland — "make a <colour> <type>", with a hidden table of three chained production rules (A)+(B) → P0, (C)+(D) → P1, (P0)+(P1) → GOAL. The table is never shown. The only way to learn it is to push things together and read productions in the next observation.

Scoring

solved[i]     = 1 if taskOutcome[i] == "solved" else 0
progress[i]   = subgoal credits earned on task i          (0…3; 3 if solved)
speed[i]      = (6 - taskTurns[i]) if solved[i] else 0    (0…5)

scores[s] = 100_000 × Σ solved + 1_000 × Σ progress + 10 × Σ speed

Every term is computed PER LANE. results.win[s] is tasksSolved[s] >= parTasks; results.winner is the seat with the STRICTLY highest scores, and on an exact tie it is null with results.tied true. deaths, crashes, taskCellsSeen, doorsOpened, objectsPickedUp, productionsFired, primitivesExecuted, actionsDropped, macrosUnreachable and repliesRepaired are measured and never scored.

End conditions

results.reason is a closed enum of exactly three values:

  • complete — every lane finished the gauntlet (endRule: allLanesComplete) or the turn cap fired (turnCap).
  • deadline — the engine's wallClockBudgetSeconds (660 s) stop (endRule: wallClock). Settles with the real phases solved so far in every lane and marks every unstarted phase unreached.
  • fault — an unexpected exception (endRule: fault). Artifacts are still written and the process exits 0.

results.endRule is the closed enum allLanesComplete | turnCap | wallClock | fault, and results.laneEndRule[s] — what ended THAT lane — is gauntletComplete | turnCap | wallClock.

A silent seat does not end the episode. A seat that never connects, disconnects mid-episode, or fails every decision has ITS LANE driven by scout to that lane's natural end, with deadSeats[s] = true. The other three lanes are untouched — that is what isolation buys.

The scripted baselines

  • scout — a deterministic frontier explorer with a goal check: finish if you can, else go to the known target, else walk to the known floor cell adjacent to the most ? cells and cross into the unknown, else spin. It never plans a path through lava and never forwards into a known obstacle. It is also the server-side fallback.
  • bumper — the reactive control: twenty-four actions a turn, each forward if the cell ahead is traversable in the known map, else right. No memory, no BFS, no mission parsing.