# RevengeBench: Reverse Engineering Code-Space Policies from Behavioral Experiments

> Tests whether agents can recover executable decision policies from behavioral traces and self-designed opponent probes, using 75 synthetic policies across five game arenas and measuring held-out action agreement and downstream competitive value.

- Authors: Babak Rahmani; Sebastian Dziadzio; Joschka Strüber; Sergio Hernández-Gutiérrez; Matthias Bethge
- Venue: arXiv
- Status: Preprint
- Publication / posting date: June 24, 2026
- Date source: arXiv v1 submission history; the non-archival AIWILD workshop acceptance does not create a separate publication date.
- First arXiv submission: June 24, 2026
- arXiv: 2606.26094
- Reviewed arXiv version: v1
- DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.26094
- Sources reviewed: 2026-10-17
- Added to the catalog: 2026-10-16
- Original paper: <https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26094>
- PDF: <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.26094v1>
- Code: <https://github.com/bethgelab/revenge-bench>
- Project: <https://revengebench.com/>
- BibTeX: <https://awesomerea.org/papers/citations/paper-revengebench.bib>
- Catalog page: <https://awesomerea.org/papers/paper-revengebench/>
- Record JSON: <https://awesomerea.org/papers/paper-revengebench/record.json>
- Chinese version: [简体中文](https://awesomerea.org/zh/papers/paper-revengebench/index.md)

## Scope and limitations

The targets are fixed synthetic policies, not full games or adaptive adversaries. Agreement on finitely evaluated states does not uniquely identify source code, and some arenas have substantial variance. The public package omits some paper-only plotting and ablation suites; reproduction also needs CodeClash, a container runtime, and model access.

## Why it fits this collection

Provides a game-domain benchmark for agent-assisted behavioral reverse engineering and active experimental design.

## Publication and review notes

Accepted to the non-archival Second Workshop on Agents in the Wild (AIWILD) at ICML 2026: its OpenReview record was published on 2026-05-23 and is linked from the ICML page for the July 11, 2026 workshop. The workshop call states a non-archival policy, so this entry keeps the arXiv preprint and first-submission date. The repository and an author’s publication page also report the acceptance. The artifact is official.

## Primary sources

1. <https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26094>
2. <https://arxiv.org/html/2606.26094v1>
3. <https://github.com/bethgelab/revenge-bench>
4. <https://github.com/bethgelab/revenge-bench/blob/090048696b4c7287e4cd05a728d4bba10fc8d421/README.md>
5. <https://joschkastrueber.github.io/publications/>
6. <https://openreview.net/forum?id=KTnZYPgaQz>
7. <https://icml.cc/virtual/2026/workshop/54082>
8. <https://agentwild-workshop.github.io/icml2026/>

## About this entry

Reviewed against the paper and its primary sources. Cite the original authors using the linked paper or BibTeX.
Original editorial content: MIT. Linked projects, papers and assets retain their own rights and licenses.