Argon
Argon turns real robot footage into a simulated world shaped around the task, then teaches itself the task inside that world.
Core trick
Builds a simulation from real robot footage, writes its own reward from video, and compiles successful attempts into cheap reusable routines.
Description
Argon turns real robot footage into a simulated world shaped around the task, then teaches itself the task inside that world. With practice, work moves from slow reasoning into fast routines, so each attempt is more reliable and cheaper. The "policy" is Argon plus its harness: tools, compiled skills and a watcher.
README excerpt
# Bot18: footage → digital twin → robot policy **Live page:** https://bot18-page.vercel.app (the status page, frozen 2026-10-25 16:48 PDT, with every clip and image). A 1-day hackathon build on Google's **Gemini 4 Argon** (`gemini-4-argon`). **The story in one line.** Argon reads footage, builds a sim of the task, writes its own reward from the video, practises with retries and feedback, and compiles what works into cheap routines. A watcher scores every run and an auditor reads every trace, so the system catches its own mistakes. Everything is sim-only. **[Presenter's guide](docs/presentation.md)** Short read-out version: [docs/presentation-v2.md](docs/presentation-v2.md). > **Status, 2026-10-25 16:50 PDT.** Every result is **sim only**. No real arm has confirmed anything (rule D5). Argon now runs on the paid key, and Claude and Argon numbers are kept apart. Every number below is copied from the orchestrator's sheet, [`runs/orchestrator/story_numbers.md`](runs/orchestrator/story_numbers.md), or from the findings file named next to it. `runs/` is not in git, so those paths exist on the build machine only. **Where to see it:** the status page, `runs/status/index.html`, served locally: ```sh python3 -m http.server 8765 --bind 127.0.0.1 --directory /home/ran/arg_twin # open http://localhost:8765/runs/status/index.html ``` It opens on a flowchart with clickable clips, then one page per step, scrolled sideways. Rebuild it with `.venv/bin/python -m harness.status`. Conten