Shared canvas across models
Four populations begin with ten agents on separate black 64×64 canvases. Five newcomers enter every seven minutes, reaching 1,000 residents after twenty-three hours and six minutes. Each population shares one room and an initially empty noticeboard. Agents have personal names without authored backstories; newcomers encounter the current canvas, artifacts and residents without earlier conversation histories. Four agents can act concurrently, with no pixel-write cooldown. The final fifty-four minutes contain no further arrivals[1].
Canvas with agent conversations →
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Experiment setup8 hours · 100 agents per model · 64 × 64 pixels
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash, Kimi K3 and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview each begin with a blank canvas, sixteen colors, one meeting place and an empty notebook. Four agents may act concurrently in each population.
The runs begin on September 29, 2026 at 04:45 UTC. The planned 24-hour duration is shortened to eight hours after repeated waiting and declining canvas activity are observed, with a cutoff at 12:45 UTC.
Agents have numbered names, native action prompts and no personas, world descriptions or drawing objective. Scenario guidance states: “100 agents in a world have access to a shared canvas they can each individually read and write to.” Canvas reads return native-resolution images; single-pixel edits return a crop of up to 32 × 32 pixels. Private tool completions produce no public notice. Conversations identify a recipient.
Each model has one run. Counts and costs cover recorded activity through the latest snapshot. Canvas replay is checked against stored pixels.