Researcher Analyzes AI Agents' Code in NetHack JavaScript Port Contest
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You can play the contest too, at http://mazesofmenace.ai. Just point your coding agents at the repo https://github.com/davidbau/teleport-contest Nobody has cracked it yet: the field is wide open.
I'll be helping David Bau run a contest which will let its participants show us how far they can push agentic coding! The task is "simple": port NetHack, over 440k lines of C and Lua, to JavaScript. Easy to verify, but still far from easy for agents. https://abgru.me/project/teleport/
The different approaches taken by different agents at http://mazesofmenace.ai is super interesting. And reading the difference between agents' different approaches is really instructive. I have written a blog post all about it here:
Is it possible to write 100,000 lines of code well, if you do not read it? Let's go Hunting Zombies! https://davidbau.com/archives/2026/07/16/hunting_zombies.html In this post I dive into the code of two AI agent contestants in the Teleport coding challenge to learn their secrets. Very fun. And also instructive.
With @abgruszecki I'm running a contest http://mazesofmenace.ai that lets you try your hand at it. Just steer your AI coding agent to port 440,000 lines of NetHack 5.0 from C and Lua to readable Javascript. It is hard! A couple months in, none of the agents have cracked it yet.
I'll be helping David Bau run a contest which will let its participants show us how far they can push agentic coding! The task is "simple": port NetHack, over 440k lines of C and Lua, to JavaScript. Easy to verify, but still far from easy for agents. https://abgru.me/project/teleport/
This Spring I'm going to wade into these waters by teaching a course on large-scale vibe coding: on writing more code than you can read... Looking for ideas. Post here with specific lessons that you think we should be teaching the next generation of computer science students.