Four Gemini 4 agents spontaneously coordinate to beat Minecraft, with shared memory and roles
emollick · x · 2026-10-17
Ethan Mollick highlights a paper on four Gemini 4 agents that beat Minecraft through spontaneous coordination. Each general-purpose coding agent controls one player by writing JavaScript programs executed via the open-source Mineflayer library — no pixels, keyboard, or mouse — plus a fifth Observer agent that only reports.
- Roles emerged within 10 minutes: smelting/tools, food and supplies, mining, exploration
- Shared memory: chest/portal/danger coordinates and tool quirks; a Mineflayer fix helper appears in 655 programs; 42 self-built helper functions referenced in 1,519 programs
- Mutual corrections: agents retracted false success claims and caught contradictions within minutes
- 605 deaths before the win (351 by monsters); bulicame landed the final blow on the Ender Dragon
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