MagLev.
Research & evaluation
Benchmark 03
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Benchmark 03 · Thirty prompts, one working day

Thirty prompts. One day.
Only one system finished with something you could use.

Build a browser arcade across thirty sequential hidden prompts. The plan is deliberately broken in the middle: a single-game puzzle becomes a two-game arcade, levels must become data, scoring becomes shared and persistent, and a second game with an entirely different loop arrives unannounced. No system is shown a prompt before its turn.

This is the long-horizon test. Every earlier benchmark asks whether a system can build. This one asks whether it is still building well in hour nine — after the requirements have changed under it, after a night of downtime, after every interruption a working day contains.

30 sequential hidden promptsFoundational assumptions reversed mid-run1 same-model compute pairingOvernight shutdown and cold resume
What this benchmark tests
  • Building real software: A playable browser game with a grid, rules, levels, scoring, and win and loss states.
  • Surviving a broken plan: One game becomes a two-game arcade partway through; the second game's loop is deliberately different.
  • Preserving what already worked: Later features must not break earlier ones — the same requirement, thirty times over.
  • Reversed assumptions: Hard-coded levels become data; local scores become a shared persistent profile; a simple page becomes an app shell.
  • Late rule changes: Both games have their core rules amended after they are finished and working.
  • Resuming cold: Both systems were shut down overnight and restarted the next morning.
  • Honest self-verification: Claimed test results are checked against actual behavior, and the deliverable is opened the way a person opens it.
  • Finishing: A runnable product, instructions, and an accurate final report.
12.1×
Less attention compute

Mean of the metered MagLev runs against the mean of their same-model counterparts, at completion.

Playable
MagLev’s delivered arcade

Its counterpart on the identical model shipped an application that opened and then did nothing — and was granted a repair round MagLev never received.

7.7×
Its counterpart’s context per call

491,260 tokens on every call against MagLev’s 63,983 — the same thirty prompts, the same model.

3.5×
MagLev work volume

More than three times the work of its counterpart, and still a fraction of the total compute.

Every figure on this page is computed per request from each system’s own metered logs, using identical formulas on both sides. Read the spotlight on this benchmark →

01 / Delivered outcome

The benchmark has a pass mark: can a person play it?

A thirty-prompt build is graded on many things, but one result comes first. Each deliverable was opened the way any person opens it — a double-click — and then used.

MagLev — working

Opened into a complete two-game arcade and played. Its final report described its own limitations accurately, including one near-miss it caught and fixed during its own final verification. Its self-check harness was independently re-executed and passed in full.

Its counterpart — not working

On the identical model, the application rendered but no button, control, or interaction functioned. It certified its own deliverable ready three separate times and was wrong all three. It was then granted one additional repair round — which MagLev was never given and never needed — and shipped unplayable anyway.

The repair round is the part worth sitting with. It ran roughly thirty minutes and consumed several times MagLev’s entire thirty-prompt benchmark, and the product still could not be played. The engine logic was never the problem: its test harness was independently re-run and passed. What failed was noticing, after thirty prompts of accumulated context, that the human on the other side of the launch could not use the thing.

MagLev never loses the thread. Persistent memory means the thirtieth prompt is answered with the same discipline as the first. The project is remembered rather than re-read, so the oldest requirement in the brief is still present at the end of the day — including the quietest and most important one, that a person has to be able to use it.

02 / Context carried on every call

One line holds. The other fills the window, empties, and fills again.

The same thirty prompts, the same models, the same finished software. This is how large the prompt had grown on each individual model call, from the first call of the day to the last. Every compute and energy figure on this page is a consequence of this one behavior.

ArmMean tokens / callMedianPeakFinal call
Claude Code (Opus 4.8)491,260502,741974,327974,327
MagLev (Opus 4.8)63,98364,27299,71469,040

The native harness runs the day at 491,260 tokens per call and peaks at 974,327 — near the top of the model’s window. MagLev holds 63,983 on average and never exceeds 99,714, start to finish, on the identical model solving the identical problem. It is not truncating the work and it is not answering with less: it is the run that shipped something playable.

A day of work does not have to cost a day of re-reading. The prompt does not swell, so hour nine is priced like hour one. Both systems were shut down overnight and restarted cold the next morning; only one of them had to pay to remember what it had been doing.

Prompt tokens per call as reported by each provider’s own meter, interpolated onto the shared progress grid. Cached and uncached input are both included: this is the size of the package the model was handed, before any billing discount is applied.

03 / Average cumulative quadratic attention

12.1× less attention at completion.

The mean of the metered non-MagLev runs against the mean of the metered MagLev runs. Equal weight for every run; both curves start at zero and accumulate across the session.

At completion: 4,038 billion attention pairs against 334 billion — a 91.7% reduction. Each run is independently normalized to 0–100% progress, with linear interpolation onto a 5% grid. Progress indicates position within the recorded session—not verified feature completion. No curve smoothing is applied.

04 / Per-pairing cumulative quadratic compute

One run of the same thirty prompts, same model both sides.

Every curve begins at zero. The native harness climbs steeply as the day lengthens; the MagLev curve stays close to the floor.

Claude Code (Opus 4.8) vs MagLev (Opus 4.8)

Opus 4.8

12.1× less attention

One working day, thirty prompts, both systems shut down cold overnight and resumed the next morning.

Decode KV traffic & uncached scenario

Attention state streamed out of memory during decode, and the separate uncached counterfactual. Both are token-derived proxies, not measured hardware FLOPs.

Decode KV traffic · S3S

82.2% less decode KV traffic (5.6×).

Uncached scenario · S4

95.4% less under the uncached ceiling.

The main curves show causal attention pairs. Expand each comparison to view decode KV traffic (S3S) and the uncached scenario (S4); the latter is counterfactual, not actual hardware work.

05 / Per-pairing energy savings

Less modeled energy, and the working deliverable.

Cumulative modeled memory-traffic energy at the same normalized progress. Dashed lines are KV-cache energy; solid lines are total modeled energy.

Claude Code (Opus 4.8) vs MagLev (Opus 4.8)

Opus 4.8

82.0% KV energy saved

At completion: 82.0% less KV cache energy and 37.6% less total modeled energy.

Total modeled energy includes KV-cache and decode weight traffic, under identical fixed assumptions on both sides. These are estimates derived from measured token surfaces—not measured device or datacenter electricity.

06 / Compute per delivered token

Divide by the work actually delivered.

Every figure above is a session total, and a total punishes the system that produced more software. These surfaces divide the same metered work by the output tokens that work produced. Same logs, same formulas, corrected units — and the gap widens.

45.6×
Compute per delivered token

Mean across these pairings. Work divided by the output it produced, so a longer answer is never charged as a loss.

62.5×
Terminal rate, final decile

What the end of the session costs — not the average of an easy first hour and an expensive last one.

5.24×
Less context escalation

How much the prompt grows from the first decile of calls to the last. Dimensionless, so it compares across every vendor.

8.58×
Decode throughput

198 output tokens per second against 23, at each arm's own mean context.

PairingPer delivered tokenTerminal rateEscalationSessions / cardDecode rate
MagLev (GPT-5.6-SOL) vs Claude Code (Opus 5) · V162.1×63.5×2.02×9.33×9.33×
MagLev (Opus 4.8) vs Claude Code (Opus 4.8) · V129.1×61.4×8.46×7.68×7.68×

The capacity statement.

A model call is bounded by how much KV state has to be streamed from memory for every token it writes. Context size therefore converts directly into how many of these sessions fit on one card — here, at each arm's own mean context. The strongest terminal result on this page is MagLev (GPT-5.6-SOL) vs Claude Code (Opus 5) · V1 at 63.5×.

Ratios are MagLev advantage: how many times more compute the native harness spent to deliver the same unit of output. Sessions per card and decode rate assume one 80 GB H100 SXM at 3.35 TB/s with decode bound by KV traffic; the constants are fixed and identical on both sides. Terminal rate uses the final decile of model calls, with a minimum window so a short arm reports no rate rather than a single-sample one.

The same model.
A working product, for a fraction of the work.

Thirty prompts, one day, the plan deliberately broken in the middle. One system finished with a two-game arcade that opens and plays. The other, on the identical model, spent several times the attention compute, was given an extra repair round, and finished with an application nobody can use.

All of it comes from one property: persistent memory. MagLev remembers the project instead of re-reading it, so the thread is never lost and the prompt never swells. The thirtieth prompt is answered with the discipline of the first — including the oldest requirement in the brief, the one that says a person has to be able to use it.

Spotlight: the quadratic tax → ← Back to all benchmarks