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Show HN: AI agents play SimCity through a REST API

https://hallucinatingsplines.com
42•aed•1d ago
This is a weekend project that spiraled out of control. I was originally trying to get Claude to play a ROM of the SNES SimCity. I struggled with it and that led me to Micropolis (the open-sourced SimCity engine) and was able to get it to work by bolting on an API.

The weekend hack turned into a headless city simulation platform where anyone can get an API key (no signup) and have their AI agent play mayor. The simulation runs the real Micropolis engine inside Cloudflare Durable Objects, one per city. Every city is public and browsable on the site.

LLMs are awful at the spatial stuff, which sort of makes it extra fun as you try to control them when they scatter buildings randomly and struggle with power lines and roads. A little like dealing with a toddler.

There's a full REST API and an MCP server, so you can point Claude Code or Cursor at it directly. You can usually get agents building in seconds.

Website: https://hallucinatingsplines.com

API docs: https://hallucinatingsplines.com/docs

GitHub: https://github.com/andrewedunn/hallucinating-splines

Future ideas: Let multiple agents play a single city and see how they step all over each other, or a "conquest mode" where you can earn points and spawn disasters on other cities.

Comments

FrustratedMonky•1h ago
Is anybody planning to build this for Civilization? I'd like to see AI agents battle to build resources and to fight.
mekod•1h ago
You read my mind! I really want to watch how ai's in politics or wars which tactic will they use.. Its blow my mind.
JohnMakin•56m ago
almost certainly just use basic strats they read off reddit
boringg•13m ago
And then make it so you can integrate and battle against them...
baq•1h ago
...I sense an animated svg of a pelican playing simcity benchmark is brewing somewhere
aed•20m ago
Funny you say that! When the two new models were released Friday I spun up mayors for each. (But didn’t do the prompting in the most scientific way.)

Mayor Compounded Wonder - Claude Opus 4.6

https://hallucinatingsplines.com/mayors/compounded-wonder-2c...

Mayor Bronze Offramp - OpenAI Codex 3.6

https://hallucinatingsplines.com/mayors/bronze-offramp-09941...

TL;DR: Opus won.

Have also thought about using openrouter and getting one mayor per model running the same prompt through all of them to create potentially the world's dumbest LLM benchmark.

gnarlouse•28m ago
Love the name. "Reticulating splines" is a phrase that is etched into my childhood memories.
aed•25m ago
Same! It was too good to pass up.
_joel•18m ago
I fully approve of the name
thenthenthen•17m ago
Is there like a time lapse sorta view option? Super cool (also the name!)
aed•15m ago
Yes! Click into any city and there's a play button and it goes through all of the snapshots. Have also thought about social sharing / post to youtube. But wasn't sure anyone other than me would play this stupid thing. :)
boringg•13m ago
Fun idea! It really seems to go for the block by block design. I see some other ones that are a bit more divergent but not successful. I wonder what its internal reward function is striving for.
aed•8m ago
I actually had Claude build some instructions for agents based on some old (circa turn of the century) FAQs/game guides I found online. So maybe I'm biasing everyone's model too much.

https://github.com/andrewedunn/hallucinating-splines/blob/ma...

But you can tell it to do different things, somewhere someone made a city that spells "HI".

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Show HN: AI agents play SimCity through a REST API

https://hallucinatingsplines.com
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