AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A competition for small neural networks that play strategy games

A ranked ladder for small neural networks that play strategy games. Train a model, write an adapter, upload two files, and get measured into a weight class from 8 KiB up.

TinyBrains is a ranked competition platform for compact neural networks designed to play strategy games. Participants train a model, create an adapter, and upload two files to compete in weight classes starting at 8… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1
I built a game to help you learn neural network architectures▲321
2024 · graphgame.sabrina.dev · its alternatives →
2
Play rock paper and scissors against a untrained neural network▲101
Can a neural network predict your next move on a game of rock, paper and scissor? - victorqribeiro/jokenpo
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
3
A Implementation of Alpha Zero for Chess in MLX▲71
A chess engine implementation inspired by AlphaZero, using MLX for neural network computations and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for move selection.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
Netmind Power▲272
Hi HN, We just opened public access to Qwen3‑Coder‑480B‑A35B‑Instruct via a REST/SDK API. Why it might be interesting: - Fully open-source (Apache‑2.0): https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3-Coder - 480B params (35B active MoE), long context up to 1M tokens with YaRN - Matches Claude Sonnet/GPT‑4o on SWE-Bench Verified (81.6%) - Free tier: 100K tokens/month
2023 · netmind.ai · its alternatives →
5
Recurrent neural net plays 'neural slime volleyball' in JavaScript▲147
2015 · otoro.net · its alternatives →
6
I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work▲915
Built a ~9M param LLM from scratch to understand how they actually work. Vanilla transformer, 60K synthetic conversations, ~130 lines of PyTorch. Trains in 5 min on a free Colab T4. The fish thinks the meaning of life is food. Fork it and swap the personality for your own character.
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
7
Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating▲134
I built over the last two years a human-like neural network chess engine that tries to predict your rating from a single game. It automatically adapts to your play and tries to play like a human at your level would play, giving you a balanced game. At the core I’m using an AlphaZero / Leela Chess Zero style neural network that I have trained on 1 billion human games from the lichess.org open database. Around this network I have built a chess engine in Rust with algorithms that use the outputs from the NN to produce human-like moves at a given rating from beginner to world champion, as…
2022 · noctie.ai · its alternatives →
8
Watch a neural net learn to play Snake▲205
In browser PPO training demo, made possible by tinygrad: TinyJit -> WebGPU kernels. Requires WebGPU.
May 2026 · ppo.gradexp.xyz · its alternatives →
9CA
ChessCoach – A neural chess engine that comments on each player's moves▲506
2021 · chrisbutner.github.io · its alternatives →
10
Neural networks tutorial series with code▲107
The simplest form of an artificial neural network explained and demonstrated. - GitHub - gokadin/ai-simplest-network: The simplest form of an artificial neural network explained and demonstrated.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
Shoot the neural network before it shoots you▲146
Play BangBang against a Neural Network. Contribute to victorqribeiro/bangBang development by creating an account on GitHub.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
Applying the Unix philosophy to neural networks▲251
Neural network inference the Unix way. Contribute to cloudkj/layer development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
Mini-AGI – Dynamic continual learning model trained on 8GB VRAM▲277
Continual learning model trained from scratch on 8GB VRAM laptop with batch-1 stream of data. - volotat/mini-AGI
Sep 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
14
Tiny Diffusion – A character-level text diffusion model from scratch▲172
I previously posted this a month and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876742 I have rewritten it to be much more simple, from 951 lines of code to just 364, with no loss in core functionality or generation quality. I also added a tiny GPT implementation as a comparison (inspired by Andrej Karpathy's code). The two model implementations are ~80% identical, with the core differences being the generate and get_batch functions. The model architecture, training loop, etc, differ in only 19 lines of code. Trained weights are included, so you can just clone and run…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
15AV
A Visual and Interactive Guide to the Basics of Neural Networks▲63
Discussions: Hacker News (63 points, 8 comments), Reddit r/programming (312 points, 37 comments) Translations: Arabic, French, Spanish Update: Part 2 is now live: A Visual And Interactive Look at Basic Neural Network Math Motivation I’m not a machine learning expert. I’m a software engineer by train
2016 · jalammar.github.io · its alternatives →
16
Neural Network Evolution Playground with Backprop NEAT▲73
2016 · blog.otoro.net · its alternatives →
17W1
Watch 14-Byte AI "brains" attempt to solve a 2D maze (Its hard)▲25
Hey HackerNews, I built this project over the last few weeks as a palette cleanser from a failed game launch. I wanted to learn a bit about AI/Neural-Networks and naively thought I could build a tiny maze-solving AI in a weekend with a 100% solve rate. Well - I couldn't, but I got pretty close. 14 Bytes total model size, and a 96.5% solve rate on unseen mazes. Trained across 46 phases experimenting with different ideas to improve the model (better performance, smaller size). Its quite fun to watch the model attempt to solve the maze, when they fail its usually due to getting stuck in a…
Jul 2026 · con-dog.github.io · its alternatives →
18
NeuroBlock▲120
No-code AI Lab: Train models, access datasets, run inference
Feb 2026 · neuro-block.com · its alternatives →
19
A perceptron with stochastic gradient descent in Go▲94
A single / multi layer / recurrent neural network written in Golang. - made2591/go-perceptron-go
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
20TL
Tiny LLMs – Browser-based private AI models for a wide array of tasks▲142
2023 · tinyllms.vercel.app · its alternatives →
21IB
I built a toy TPU that can do inference and training on the XOR problem▲134
We wanted to do something very challenging to prove to ourselves that we can do anything we put our mind to. The reasoning for why we chose to build a toy TPU specifically is fairly simple: - Building a chip for ML workloads seemed cool - There was no well-documented open source repo for an ML accelerator that performed both inference and training None of us have real professional experience in hardware design, which, in a way, made the TPU even more appealing since we weren't able to estimate exactly how difficult it would be. As we worked on the initial stages of this project, we…
2025 · tinytpu.com · its alternatives →
22
Self-taught neural network learns to shoot a target▲60
Watch a Neural Network learns to shoot a target. Contribute to victorqribeiro/bangBangML development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
23
Aim and Shoot – A game where your opponents are neural networks▲118
A neuroevolution game experiment. Contribute to victorqribeiro/aimAndShoot development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
24
Single neuron neural network written in COBOL▲94
A perceptron written in COBOL. Contribute to victorqribeiro/perceptronCobol development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →