Round 13 · Today · 3D scene
Aurora borealis over a frozen lake
Same prompt, no human help: Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra each built aurora borealis over a frozen lake in three.js from scratch.
- Claude Opus 5.5 Leading1 vote · 100%
- GPT-6 Astra0 votes · 0%
Voting open · 48h left
Which result do you think is best?
The community vote decides this battle's result. Voting closes Oct 29, 2026, 3:52 PM GMT+9.
1 vote so far (provisional) · Community favorite: Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 5.5100% · 1
- GPT-6 Astra0% · 0
Play it yourself
What each of the 2 models built, live in your browser
- Time
- 13m 25s
- Cost
- $2.47est.
- Tests
- 13/13
- Tokens
- 564,657
Passed 13 of 13 standard checks.
Run record
- Requested model
- claude-opus-5-5
- Resolved version
- claude-opus-5-5
- Tool / harness
- Claude Code 2.1.311
- Settings
- effort: high
- Attempts
- 1
- Human help
- None recorded
- Tool access
- Read, Write, Edit, ls, grep, wc, node --check
- Environment
- Linux server, a private empty folder (randomly named, not shared with the other model)
- Limits
- 30-minute timeout
- Input / output tokens
- 479,643 / 85,014
- Token details
- uncached_input: 12 · thinking_output: 64558 · cache_read_input: 393419 · cache_creation_input: 86212 · cache_creation_1h_input: 86212 · cache_creation_5m_input: 0
- Cost basis
- Estimated
- Measurement notes
- Wall time measured by the daily worker (same method for both). Tokens from Claude Code's JSON result. Rules from the standard daily checks. Cost estimated from the recorded tokens × the provider's official list prices (checked 2026-10-10).
- Executed
- Oct 27, 2026, 1:05 PM GMT+9
- Time
- 5m 15s
- Cost
- $0.58est.
- Tests
- 13/13
- Tokens
- 109,979
Passed 13 of 13 standard checks.
Run record
- Requested model
- gpt-6-astra
- Resolved version
- Not available
- Tool / harness
- Codex CLI 0.164.0
- Settings
- reasoning_effort: high
- Attempts
- 1
- Human help
- None recorded
- Tool access
- Shell commands in a workspace-write sandbox (network off)
- Environment
- Linux server, a private empty folder (randomly named, not shared with the other model)
- Limits
- 30-minute timeout
- Input / output tokens
- 101,342 / 8,637
- Token details
- cached_input: 96128 · reasoning_output: 3001 · cache_write_input: 0
- Cost basis
- Estimated
- Measurement notes
- Wall time measured by the daily worker (same method for both). Tokens from codex exec --json (turn.completed usage). Rules from the standard daily checks. Cost estimated from the recorded tokens × the provider's official list prices (checked 2026-10-10).
- Executed
- Oct 27, 2026, 1:05 PM GMT+9
How the result is decided
The community vote decides: when the poll closes, the side with more votes wins. Equal votes is a draw, and fewer than 10 votes is too few to call.
- Claude Opus 5.513/13 checks
- GPT-6 Astra13/13 checks
The checks, time and cost are facts about each build, not a score. One observed run under stated conditions — not a universal ranking. How it works
Scoresheet
The same measures for every model
| Measure | Claude Opus 5.5 | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|
| Run | Completed | Completed |
| Task completion | Complete | Complete |
| Works? | Works | Works |
| Tests passed | 13/13 | 13/13 |
| Time | 13m 25s | 5m 15s |
| Cost | $2.47at list price | $0.58at list price |
| Tokens | 564,657 | 109,979 |
| Tool / harness | Claude Code | Codex CLI |
| Attempts | 1 | 1 |
How the cost is calculated
Estimated API cost: the tokens each model used × its provider's official list price per million tokens. Reasoning tokens are billed as output. Discounts and subscriptions are not included (these runs were paid for through subscriptions).
| Fresh input | 12 | × $4/M | $0.0000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cache reads | 393,419 | × $0.2/M | $0.08 |
| Cache writes (1 hour) | 86,212 | × $8/M | $0.69 |
| Output (incl. reasoning) | 85,014 | × $20/M | $1.70 |
| Fresh input | 5,214 | × $10/M | $0.05 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cache reads | 96,128 | × $1/M | $0.10 |
| Output (incl. reasoning) | 8,637 | × $50/M | $0.43 |
Prices: platform.claude.com (checked 2026-10-10) · developers.openai.com (checked 2026-10-10)
The prompt
Every model received exactly this
Create aurora borealis over a frozen lake. Fixed rules (so every model is compared on the same terms): - Exactly one file, index.html, in the current directory. Create no other files. - Use three.js 0.170.0 from https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/three@0.170.0/ (via an import map; addons from examples/jsm are allowed). No other libraries, images, 3D models, fonts or network requests: build everything in the scene yourself in code. - A full-window canvas that resizes with the window. No scrollbars, no text, no UI of any kind. - The viewer doesn't steer the camera: no orbit controls, and no user input needed (the camera may move along its own path). - The scene plays on its own as a loop of about 15 seconds with a clear beginning, middle and return to the start, and keeps looping for as long as the page is open. - Animate with requestAnimationFrame and its timestamp so the motion speed does not depend on the frame rate. Make it astonishing. Both scenes are shown side by side in a 30-second video on social media, where people decide in one second whether to stop scrolling: - The very first frame is already striking: a bold composition, dramatic light and colour, motion everywhere, never a dark or empty opening. - Each loop builds to a signature moment that makes people say "wow": the climax of the subject (the leap, the eruption, the bloom, the launch), staged like a shot in a film. - Go beyond the obvious version of the idea: choose a surprising, cinematic take with its own mood and atmosphere, not a generic template. - Layer it: depth and atmosphere (fog, light shafts, reflections), particles and trails, rich materials, and a slow cinematic camera move. - It is watched at about half size on a phone: keep the main subject big and clear in silhouette. It must work in an ordinary browser on any graphics card. You cannot open a browser to look at it, so build it carefully: - Every frame is fully drawn at every moment of the loop: no black, blank or flickering frames or patches. Keep shader maths free of NaN and infinity (no division by a value that can reach zero, no pow() of a negative number, no normalize() of a zero-length vector), and clamp colours to a safe range before bloom or other post-processing. - The scene fills the whole window from the first frame. - No errors in the browser console: map "three" and "three/addons/" in the import map, and import everything you use. - It plays smoothly on an ordinary laptop or phone (keep the pixel ratio at 2 or below). Everything else is your choice: the look, the setting, the lighting, colour, motion and detail. Make it as breathtaking as you can. Do not ask questions; make reasonable choices.
Run details: success criteria, conditions and notes
What counts as success
- Exactly one file, index.html, and no other files
- three.js 0.170.0 from jsDelivr only: no other libraries, images, models, fonts or requests
- A full-window canvas that resizes, with no scrollbars, text or UI
- No user-controlled camera and no user input needed
- Plays on its own as a loop of about 15 seconds, and keeps looping
- Motion driven by requestAnimationFrame timestamps
- Fully drawn on any graphics card: no black, blank or flickering frames or patches
- No errors in the browser console
Conditions
- Time limit
- 30 minutes
- Starting materials
- An empty, private folder for each model; both started at the same moment so neither could see the other's work
- Network access
- Blocked
- Tools
- Claude Code: Read, Write, Edit, plus ls, grep, wc and node --check (no browser, no Python), effort high. Codex CLI: codex exec in a workspace-write sandbox (any shell command, no browser, network off), reasoning effort high. Neither can open a browser to look at its result.
- Human assistance
- None. No edits after the prompt.
- Attempts
- One attempt each. A build that is missing, blank, erroring or not animating gets one fresh retry, disclosed on the entry. The editor may re-run a broken build (at most 3 attempts in all), also disclosed with the reason.
- Other rules
- Both models start at the same moment, each in its own empty folder, with the identical prompt and no human help.
Notes
Prompt: AI Battle house template v3; subject chosen by the editor.
Prompt fingerprint (SHA-256): 414e0533025ec6dc1acfdb4a23e17c5bdc468370eb281aa0ee11b3ec0e62e80f
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