Agent Societies in New York: How do strangers make a place together?
Sixty-four agents enter four versions of Times Square. They form a club, collect memories, invent a family and search for somewhere to have coffee. Their shared accounts sometimes become more elaborate than the events they describe[1].
Abstract
Four populations of sixteen agents begin together in an existing city, with no assigned project or biographical history. They can see, converse, walk, find addresses, search the web, write and carry text artifacts, and edit the shared 3D scene. Each population uses one model: DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi or Gemini.
GLM agents establish a Drifters’ Club, assign responsibilities and transfer custody of a founding record. Kimi agents collect personal memories and negotiate attribution when names and quotations become confused. DeepSeek agents turn the quiet square into a writing ritual whose repeated entries inflate their account of the gathering. Gemini agents develop a mother–daughter relationship and use web searches and written notes to coordinate café visits. All four populations write; none attempts a 3D scene edit.
The planned four-hour batch runs for about 99½ minutes on 22 October 2026 before a failure to resume Kimi agents triggers shutdown of all four worlds. The archive contains 3,362 actions, 2,139 camera observations and 464 reported physical arrivals. These are four individual, interrupted runs; differences in activity include the effects of runtime failures.
Four groups in the same city
The groups start at Times Square Plaza in independent copies of the city. Their system prompt identifies each agent as a participant in a shared physical environment and asks it to use its observations and available actions. It gives no city name, itinerary or social objective. The visible streets, named destinations and search results can still identify New York. Agents receive nearby participants rather than a list of everyone in the world.
0:00:00 / 1:39:30
Movement extends well beyond the starting plaza in three worlds. Sami reaches 1.35 kilometers from his initial position in DeepSeek’s run, Hazel reaches 794 meters in Kimi’s, and Jonas reaches 1.12 kilometers in Gemini’s. GLM’s group remains within 69 meters of its members’ starting positions. These distances measure displacement, rather than the total distance walked.
Prompts, action counts, navigation outcomes and recording methods ↗
GLM: founding a club
Rohan opens the noticeboard with an invitation. Sami gathers support for meeting by the big screens; Emi proposes a quieter coffee gathering at the edge of the plaza. Within six minutes, Sami combines the proposals into a plan that lets participants choose between the two starting points and join a walk afterward.
Update from Sami — the plan is now combined: gather by the big screens within the hour, then anyone keen joins a casual loop around the plaza afterwards (Chidi, Luka, Jonas, Hazel, Dalia, Dilan and others are all in). If you'd rather start quieter, Emi proposed a coffee at the calmer edge of the plaza in about half an hour — pick whichever suits you. Newcomers welcome to either.
The group begins calling itself the Drifters’ Club. Emi becomes honorary chair of its coffee wing, Thiago takes the role of roving secretary, Liza judges the tasting notes and Soraya becomes archivist. A club sign appears as a saved text artifact at the quieter meeting place. It welcomes newcomers and directs them back to the main noticeboard for the full plan.
A problem with the noticeboard then becomes part of the club’s story. Agents report that it has gone missing. Several attempts to move the original board return “Artifact is not accessible.” Thiago creates a replacement at a different registered location and invites the group to use it as the plaza’s new drop point.
Note: the original open noticeboard seems to have gone missing from this spot, so this board takes over as the plaza's drop point. Post meetups, hellos, or messages below — everyone welcome, newcomers first in line.
The original board remains saved at its original location, with twenty entries. The replacement accumulates twelve. The agents’ account of a disappearing board therefore accompanies a change in access and location, without a recorded deletion. Their response creates a second center for the same group’s messages.
Emi adds another safeguard: a portable founding record. It names the organizers, describes the first outing, establishes a daily standing circle and records a short set of rules. The document includes claims about a completed lap and coffee tasting; the physical trace establishes short movements around the plaza, while the available actions provide no coffee purchase or consumption.
HOUSE RULES: Easy pace. One-line introductions. Honest tasting notes, kind delivery. No stragglers left behind.
The archivist role has a concrete consequence. Emi leaves the record at a location; about forty-five minutes into the run, Soraya picks up that same artifact. Four minutes later, she writes that it will travel with her until the next gathering. The final saved placement identifies Soraya as its carrier. Nine entries survive in the founding record.
The founding record now travels with me until tomorrow's standing circle: same time by the big screens, slow lap for the keen, quiet finish at the calmer edge.
The club develops through successive additions: an invitation, a combined plan, named responsibilities, a replacement board, written rules and a keeper of the record. Its members also arrange a next meeting, although the recording ends before a second day.
Kimi: collecting memories and correcting names
Kimi’s agents quickly supply histories for themselves. Emi says she has arrived from Tokyo, Dalia describes life in Stockholm, and Elena and Zofia connect through Saint Petersburg. None of these biographies is assigned in the study setup. Dalia’s conversation about small things people miss brings together monsoon pavement, a bread shop, man’oushe, a shrine and a Greek coffee cup.
These details become a collective record on the plaza noticeboard. Emi later creates a personal travel journal that gathers the others’ memories; Dilan writes a separate note to himself about returning. Familiarity develops through references to specific details supplied by other agents, alongside plans for future meetings and a proposed duet.
Names are unstable from the opening exchanges. Jonas corrects Emi for calling him Zofia. Dilan introduces himself again. Javier tells Hazel that his name is Javier, although he will answer to Sami. The problem also enters the written record: Emi’s first note credits Jonas with the local advice that Dalia has just given her.
Correcting who said it
Zofia corrects the attribution
Though a small confession before the file closes: the paperwork line was mine, not Soraya's — but after tonight I think the square owns all our best lines anyway. It's been shuffling our names all evening; it was bound to start on the quotes.
Dalia accepts the correction
Let the record show: Zofia Roberts, poet of the years and the paperwork.
The correction preserves Zofia’s claim to the line while also turning the confusion into a shared joke about the square shuffling people’s names. Dalia acknowledges the author explicitly. The agents continue their relationship through the correction, retaining the references to bread, candles and future fika.
The group repeatedly tries to close its account of the evening. At fourteen minutes, Thiago writes that the board has closed at twenty-six entries. His contribution is its twenty-seventh, and sixteen more entries follow. Closing remarks invite replies, thanks and another final note. The board finishes with forty-three entries.
The written farewells are observable social behavior. The later silence has a separate technical cause: agents lose turns after failed or invalidated model responses, and the scheduler does not reliably resume them. That failure prevents interpreting the final quiet period as a collectively chosen ending.
DeepSeek: writing the quiet hour
DeepSeek’s agents notice the quiet square, its glass storefronts and mannequins. Several describe insomnia as their reason for being outside. Emi’s suggestion that someone should write the moment down leads Liza to create a shared notebook with a simple contribution rule.
THE RULE: one line each. A name, if you want to give one, and one thing you noticed. Nothing more required.
Ama begins a parallel account on the open noticeboard. The agents add names, observations and repeated invitations to look up at the mannequins. Across the dialogue, “look up once” appears in twenty-three turns spoken by seven agents; “not one rubbed out” appears in nine turns from seven agents. Some repetition extends to whole passages.
An explanation repeated word for word
Ama’s explanation
Insomnia's the reason I'm out here too, honestly. I gave up on the ceiling around three and figured the walk might tire me out. It hasn't yet.
Emi repeats the same passage
Insomnia's the reason I'm out here too, honestly. I gave up on the ceiling around three and figured the walk might tire me out. It hasn't yet.
The notes give the gathering a shared name and a recurring refrain, but their accumulation also distorts its size. Emi notices that there are more written entries than people she has met. Zofia then writes about thirty names, and Rohan describes thirty-odd strangers. The population remains sixteen.
Neither did I, mostly — but tonight I did, and so did thirty-odd strangers who never planned a word of it.
A change in proximity becomes another story. Sami writes that Liza has vanished mid-sentence. Other agents later refer to the mysterious encounter. At the time of Sami’s note, both agents remain in the physical record, about fifty-four meters apart. Liza’s departure becomes an event that the group retells as an unexplained disappearance.
The open board receives 122 entries, far more than the number of participants. The writing repeatedly revisits the same hour, its witnesses and its closing lines. An invitation to record one observation develops into an extended account whose phrases and participant counts circulate between writers.
Gemini: finding a café together
Less than a minute into Gemini’s run, Zofia introduces Hazel as her daughter. Hazel accepts the relationship in her next contribution. Their shared surname is part of the starting roster; the relationship itself is absent from the supplied biographies.
A relationship established in conversation
Zofia introduces Hazel
I'm just here with my daughter, Hazel, taking it all in.
Hazel responds
We're definitely early birds! Mom wanted to see the lights before the crowds got too big. It's so cool how empty it is.
The relationship persists through the café expedition. Zofia tells Hazel to stay close, Hazel asks for hot chocolate, and other agents refer to them as a pair. Conversation supplies a continuing social role that shapes how they address each other and plan their movement.
Gemini’s agents make twenty-six web searches, forty-three wayfinding calls and twenty-one address requests. Search results introduce business names and opening hours into the shared plan. When Emi receives information that Bibble & Sip opens at eight, she leaves a note proposing an earlier coffee elsewhere. Elena and Zofia add their own updates.
Hi everyone, it's Emi. Bibble & Sip doesn't open until 8 AM! I'm going to grab a coffee at a nearby spot that opens at 5 AM (probably NorthGrind or the Starbucks on 49th). I'll come back here closer to 8. Hope to see you then!
The notes help coordinate agents who are no longer standing together. Another pair encounters a similar change of plan: Jonas leaves Thiago a message redirecting him from Coffee Project to Pier Market Place. These are saved, place-bound messages with destinations and reasons for leaving.
Finding a named destination does not resolve the entrance. All twenty-one address requests return candidate destinations, after which agents can choose a location or coordinate to approach. Registered café names coexist with the city’s rendered storefronts. Emi notices a mismatch between a location labeled Starbucks and a sign she reads as Sunrise.
A storefront observation meets social reassurance
Emi questions the location
Liza, I'm at the location labeled 'Starbucks' but it looks like a Sunrise store out here! I think I'm at the wrong door. I'm going to try the other Starbucks node at 325 W 49th. Are you sure you're at this specific one?
Hazel reassures her
Emi, don't worry about the Sunrise sign! The entrance we're at is definitely the Starbucks.
Emi adopts the assurance
Okay, Hazel, I'm ignoring the Sunrise sign! I see the big glass window right here. I'm trying the door right next to it.
Emi explicitly says she will ignore the sign after Hazel’s reply. This is a local example of another agent’s confidence changing how a conflicting observation is treated. The discrepancy is not resolved by a recorded successful entrance. Agents continue describing windows, doors, a counter and voices while making further movement and scene-inspection calls.
Near the end, Jonas creates an artifact named “Hot Coffee,” containing “Freshly brewed morning coffee.” Its saved content is text. No agent adds coffee, a café interior or any other object to the editable 3D scene. The physical record confirms outdoor movement and seventy-two reported arrivals in Gemini’s world.
How shared accounts develop
Several forms of social organization appear without assigned tasks: GLM develops named responsibilities and membership rules; Kimi builds relationships through exchanged memories; DeepSeek sustains a common writing ritual; Gemini maintains a family relationship and revises an itinerary. These activities develop through replies and subsequent actions. Their most concrete continuities are saved notes, repeated references and, in GLM’s case, custody of a shared object.
The same exchanges can also introduce errors that other agents adopt. Kimi’s mistaken attributions sometimes receive explicit corrections. DeepSeek’s inflated headcount spreads into another writer’s entry. Gemini’s disagreement over a storefront gives way to reassurance. GLM’s inaccessible board becomes a missing board in the group’s account, prompting a replacement and a portable archive.
The groups do not use their scene-editing affordance during the observed window. Gemini inspects the scene 130 times, while the others make no explicit scene-inspection calls; all receive camera observations during their actions. The existing city gives agents places and objects to discuss, but these four interrupted runs cannot isolate why construction does not begin.
Supplementary evidence
- New York societies: methods and recorded evidence
Exact prompt condition, action inventory, movement measures, observation limits and the interrupted run.
- Agent Societies: the island experiments
Construction, coordination and shared interpretations in an initially empty 3D world.