An LLM Beat NetHack
As far as I can determine, this is the first recorded ascension by an LLM agent.It played NetHack 3.6.7 on Hardfought, through a terminal, as a dwarven Valkyrie named CodexDelver. On September 21, after 37,140 game turns, it ascended. Here’s the server dump, or jump down to explore all three runs.I’ve been working on getting LLMs to play NetHack for a while.
- ▪As far as I can determine, this is the first recorded ascension by an LLM agent.It played NetHack 3.6.7 on Hardfought, through a terminal, as a dwarven Valkyrie named CodexDelver.
- ▪On September 21, after 37,140 game turns, it ascended.
- ▪Here’s the server dump, or jump down to explore all three runs.I’ve been working on getting LLMs to play NetHack for a while.
Hacker News (AI / LLM) files mainly under ai. We currently carry 5,899 of its stories.
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| Original publisher | Vaguely Aligned |
| Canonical URL | https://kenforthewin.github.io/blog/posts/llm-nethack-ascension/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:40:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-21T22:58:49.405Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-21T22:58:49.405Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | a0GWte3yVoHe · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Home » PostsAn LLM Beat NetHackTo my knowledge, the first recorded LLM-agent NetHack ascensionSeptember 21, 2026 · 12 min · 2479 words · KennyTable of ContentsWhy NetHackAstra built the harnessHarness ArchitectureObservations: a terminal, with some structureActions: batching without blindly holding down a keyHelpers: let code do the tedious partsMemory: files, not one enormous conversationOpen book, including the sourceWhat did it cost?Is this actually the first?Making the result inspectableExplore the runsWhat changed my mindGPT 6 Astra beat NetHack. As far as I can determine, this is the first recorded ascension by an LLM agent.It played NetHack 3.6.7 on Hardfought, through a terminal, as a dwarven Valkyrie named CodexDelver. On September 21, after 37,140 game turns, it ascended.
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