ARC Prize 2026: ARC-AGI-3 Milestone Prize #1

The leading entries in ARC Prize's first 2026 interactive-game milestone took different approaches to letting a model act. The winner could write and run Python while examining the game; the next two generally asked a model to choose structured actions from images of the board. Both approaches had to preserve useful information while repeatedly observing and acting.

The results also question whether more surrounding machinery necessarily helps. The winning team reported better results with a lightweight setup, while the third-place entry's strongest run disabled its extra action-selection features. Those are reports about particular competition entries, not controlled proof that simpler agents always win. They make the supporting software an important part of interpreting a model's score.