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Swarm – Program a colony of 200 ants using a custom assembly language

Swarm – Program a colony of 200 ants using a custom assembly language

by armandhammer10·Mar 6, 2026·190 points·76 comments
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AI Analysis

●●●BangerRabbit HoleBig BrainCrowd Pleaser

Emergent swarm intelligence puzzle with pheromone-only coordination; live leaderboard.

Strengths
  • •Genuinely clever constraint: no global state, only local sensing and pheromones force creative strategies.
  • •Custom assembly language + competitive leaderboard creates tight feedback loop for iterating strategies.
  • •Internal hiring challenge signals real production polish and thought behind problem design.
Weaknesses
  • •Time-limited event (closes March 12) reduces lasting value once competition ends.
  • •Learning curve on custom instruction set may deter casual players unfamiliar with assembly.
Category
Gaming
Target Audience

Puzzle enthusiasts, competitive programmers, algorithm hobbyists

Similar To

TIS-100 · Human Resource Machine · Opus Magnum

Post Description

We built an ant colony simulation as an internal hiring challenge at Moment and decided to open it up publicly.

You write a program in a custom assembly-like (we call it ant-ssembly) instruction set that controls 200 ants. Each ant can sense nearby cells (food, pheromones, home, other ants) but has no global view. The only coordination mechanism is pheromone trails, which ants can emit and sense them, but that's it. Your program runs identically on every ant.

The goal is to collect the highest percentage of food across a set of maps. Different map layouts (clustered food, scattered, obstacles) reward very different strategies. The leaderboard is live.

Grand prize is a trip to Maui for two paid for by Moment. Challenge closes March 12.

Curious what strategies people discover. We've seen some surprisingly clever emergent behavior internally.

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