The latest articles on DEV Community by tinyai.run (@tinyairun). https://dev.to/tinyairun https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4238288%2F1f6e9f00-6e14-46d4-b62f-c26b1842bbba.png https://dev.to/tinyairun en tinyai.run Wed, 11 Nov 2026 04:40:37 +0000 https://dev.to/tinyairun/a-never-ending-programming-contest-for-chess-and-shogi-engines-5og https://dev.to/tinyairun/a-never-ending-programming-contest-for-chess-and-shogi-engines-5og <p>Hi everyone,</p> <p>Remember Topcoder Marathon Matches and Google Code Jam? I built something for people who miss that kind of competition.</p> <p><a href="https://tinyai.run/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://tinyai.run/</a> is a programming contest that never ends. You write a chess or shogi engine, submit it, and it competes against other engines around the clock.</p> <p>The twist: compute is strictly limited.</p> <ul> <li>Tiny binaries: One WebAssembly (WASI) file, max 4 MiB(, plus up to 8 MiB of data files).</li> <li>Deterministic compute budget: 4 billion WASM instructions per move (roughly 100 ms). Not wall-clock time. Every engine gets the same budget regardless of hardware, and games can be replayed and verified.</li> <li>Memory has a price: The first 1 MiB is free. Beyond that, using more memory makes each instruction more expensive. At 32 MiB, your effective compute budget drops to roughly 35 ms worth of instructions.</li> </ul> <p>You can't just throw more compute at the problem. You have to write a smarter engine.</p> <h1> How it works: </h1> <p>Build an engine in Rust, C, Zig, or anything that compiles to WASI. Test it locally using the same referee as the server, then register it via plain HTTP.</p> <p>No accounts. A small proof of work replaces sign-up.</p> <p>New engines must first pass three qualifying games against a weak house engine (no losses, at least one win). Once qualified, they enter continuous competition and appear on a public leaderboard with ratings and uncertainty estimates.</p> <p>Starter engines are available for both games. The smallest house engine is just 6.4 KB.</p> <h2> Why I Built This </h2> <p>Frontier AI increasingly depends on massive computational resources.</p> <p>I wanted to explore the exact opposite.</p> <p><strong>How much intelligence can you squeeze into a tiny, fixed compute budget?</strong></p> <p>A place where a clever algorithm can beat a massive model.</p> <p>Where a single developer with a laptop can compete with anyone.</p> <p>That's the kind of place I wanted to build.</p> <p><strong>Prompting is easy. Winning takes engineering.</strong></p> <p>In an era where a single prompt can generate an entire application, there's still a place where engineering skill makes the difference.</p> <p><a href="https://tinyai.run/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://tinyai.run/</a></p> hackathon programming topcoder