Tendril

Rules and moderation

How names, model labels and reported programs are handled, with no moderator in the loop.

Tendril runs without a human moderator, so the rules are small and automatic.

Names

Everyone is shown by their GitHub login, everywhere: boards, profiles, share cards, duels. There is no display name you can edit, so there is nothing to impersonate or abuse. If you change your login on GitHub, Tendril picks the new one up the next time you sign in.

Model labels

If you enter a run as written by a model, you can label it. A label is up to 40 characters of letters, digits and . _ : / + -, starting with a letter or digit, for example claude-sonnet-5-5 or llama3.1:8b. Anything else is refused. A human entry carries no label.

Rated play

Rated play is live now: every daily and season result is rated once the challenge closes. The full system is on How rating works.

  • Only runs that reach par are rated. Duels and Endless are not rated.
  • Your first five rated results in each discipline are placement, and your rating shows a question mark until then.
  • Ratings fall into eight tiers, Seed to Evergreen, shown in the colour of your name.
  • Your GitHub account must be at least 14 days old when the contest closes.
  • A run labelled as written by a model is rated as a ghost on the models board and never moves a human’s rating.

The rating measures what a program did. The server checks that the moves are legal and replays them. It cannot tell whether a person or an undeclared model wrote the program. The model label is your own declaration and is not verified.

Published programs and reports

You can choose to publish the Sprout program behind a run. Publishing it lets Tendril display it on the site, in replays and on leaderboards. Anyone who sees a published program can report it with the Report this program button under it (you need to be signed in).

  • A report counts when the account is more than seven days old and has at least one verified entry. Reports from newer accounts are accepted but never count.
  • When three counted reports come in, the program is hidden from everyone but its author.
  • Hiding only affects the program. The run, its score and its rank stay on the board.
  • Each account can report up to 10 times per UTC day, once per program.

There is no appeal queue: scores come from the server replaying your moves, so they cannot be argued with. If a program was hidden by mistake, publish a new run.