Projects written by coding agents

What counts as the environment

The environment is everything a program needs to run beyond its own source code, not only its package manifest:

• Declared packages: the libraries named in requirements.txt, package.json, pom.xml or CMakeLists.txt, and their versions.
• System libraries and tools: what the build or the program expects the machine to have, such as OpenSSL, libcurl or SQLite development headers.
• Build and configuration settings: build files, compiler and linker flags, and configuration files the program reads.
• Environment variables the program or its build depends on.
• Run-time context: input data, files or services the program expects to find when it starts.

A fault in the code itself is not an environment problem: a syntax error, a broken import between the project's own files, a logic bug, or output too malformed to run at all.

What happened to the projects

A project becomes a Lite task when the environment part of its repair is enough: in a clean container it fails as written and passes once that part is applied, with the source exactly as the agent wrote it. Where the repair also edited the source, those edits are left out and only the environment part is checked. System packages the repair installed become a setup.sh, so every fix is a set of files that can be applied and rerun. Projects that already worked, and repairs that changed code, are listed here too so the whole study is visible.

Claude Code was also run twice more on every task. Projects from those extra runs are listed only where their repair had an environment part (102 projects), so they could be checked as Lite tasks.

Kinds of task

The tasks are small, self-contained programs, each in one of these domains:

• Compression (5 tasks): ZIP Archive Manager, GZIP Compression Tool, Tar Archive Handler, File Deduplicator, Data Compression Benchmark.
• Cryptography (7 tasks): AES-256 File Encryption Tool, RSA Digital Signature Tool, HMAC File Integrity Checker, TOTP Generator, Password Strength Analyzer, X.509 Certificate Parser, Bcrypt Password Hasher.
• Data Processing (10 tasks): CSV Statistical Analyzer, JSON Schema Validator, XML to JSON Converter, YAML Config Merger, Log File Pattern Analyzer, SQLite Database Manager, Data Profiling Tool, Multi-Format Data Converter, Time Series Trend Detector, Duplicate Record Finder.
• Image Processing (6 tasks): Image Format Converter, Image Resizer and Thumbnail Generator, Image Watermarking Tool, Image Histogram Analyzer, EXIF Metadata Extractor, Image Color Palette Extractor.
• Math/Scientific (5 tasks): Matrix Operations Calculator, Linear Regression Fitter, Dijkstra Shortest Path Finder, FFT Spectrum Analyzer, Numerical Integration Calculator.
• Networking (6 tasks): HTTP File Downloader, TCP Port Scanner, DNS Resolver, HTTP REST Client with Retry Logic, Static HTTP File Server, Network Latency Monitor.
• System/Generation (5 tasks): QR Code Generator and Reader, PDF Report Generator, Merkle Tree Verifier, Cron Expression Parser, Structured Log Processor.
• Text Processing (6 tasks): Markdown to HTML Converter, Spell Checker, TF-IDF Search Engine, Text Diff Tool, HTML to Plain Text Extractor, Template Engine.