{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/ale-bench-a-benchmark-for-long-horizon","title":"ALE-Bench: A Benchmark for Long-Horizon Objective-Driven Algorithm Engineering","arxiv_id":"2506.09050","date":"2025-06-10","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yuki Imajuku","Kohki Horie","Yoichi Iwata","Kensho Aoki","Naohiro Takahashi","Takuya Akiba"],"abstract":"How well do AI systems perform in algorithm engineering for hard optimization problems in domains such as package-delivery routing, crew scheduling, factory production planning, and power-grid balancing? We introduce ALE-Bench, a new benchmark for evaluating AI systems on score-based algorithmic programming contests. Drawing on real tasks from the AtCoder Heuristic Contests, ALE-Bench presents optimization problems that are computationally hard and admit no known exact solution. Unlike short-duration, pass/fail coding benchmarks, ALE-Bench encourages iterative solution refinement over long time horizons. Our software framework supports interactive agent architectures that leverage test-run feedback and visualizations. Our evaluation of frontier LLMs revealed that while they demonstrate high performance on specific problems, a notable gap remains compared to humans in terms of consistency across problems and long-horizon problem-solving capabilities. This highlights the need for this benchmark to foster future AI advancements.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09050v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.09050v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"ale-bench-a-benchmark-for-long-horizon","repo_url":"https://github.com/sakanaai/ale-bench","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"tf","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"scheduling","task_name":"Scheduling"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2506.09050","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2506.09050","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2506.09050"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/sakanaai/ale-bench","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_honours":2},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":2,"ran":2,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"2fb902a5920b9142","entry":"normalize_optional_positive_int","repo":"sakanaai/ale-bench","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/ale_bench_eval/__main__.py","file_url":"https://github.com/sakanaai/ale-bench/blob/HEAD/src/ale_bench_eval/__main__.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"Apache-2.0","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"2fb902a5920b9142"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"cce12344620816fc","entry":"power_of_two_indices","repo":"sakanaai/ale-bench","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/ale_bench_eval/__main__.py","file_url":"https://github.com/sakanaai/ale-bench/blob/HEAD/src/ale_bench_eval/__main__.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"Apache-2.0","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"cce12344620816fc"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}