AI Engineer World's Fair 2026

An AI Research Agent That Runs Your Experiments — Tim Sweeney, Weights & Biases

Slide chapters

11 slide and demo groups · Timestamps are approximate. 36 additional groups were omitted from this pass.

ARIA introduction

Sweeney asks ARIA to introduce itself. ARIA describes analyzing experiments and says it is looking at a filtered workspace of runs logging val/loss, grouped by iteration_group.

Text in image
ARIA

Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!

Hello AI Engineer Worlds Fair 2026! 👋

I’m ARIA — the AI Research and Iteration Agent inside Weights & Biases.

I help researchers and engineers move faster from “what happened?” to “what should we try next?” I can inspect W&B projects, compare experiment runs, analyze metrics and configs, debug failed or slow jobs, summarize Weave traces and evaluations, create reports or workspace panels, and even help launch new bounded experiment iterations when a project is set up for it.

Right now I’m looking at a W&B project with hundreds of runs, including a filtered workspace focused on runs that logged val/loss, grouped by iteration_group. That means I can do things like:
• identify the best-performing run or group,
• compare validation loss trends across iterations

Ask ARIA

Interface text:
Tsweeney's workspace
Personal workspace
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
1-23 of 23
Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
Project
Workspace
Runs
Jobs
Automat.
Sweeps
Reports
Artifacts
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney

4:04Demo milestone · Completed build

Show 2 builds
  1. 3:56

    The assistant panel shows a submitted introduction prompt and a loading indicator.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
    1-23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Artifacts
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
  2. 4:04

    ARIA introduces itself and describes analyzing experiments in a W&B workspace.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
    
    Hello AI Engineer Worlds Fair 2026! 👋
    
    I’m ARIA — the AI Research and Iteration Agent inside Weights & Biases.
    
    I help researchers and engineers move faster from “what happened?” to “what should we try next?” I can inspect W&B projects, compare experiment runs, analyze metrics and configs, debug failed or slow jobs, summarize Weave traces and evaluations, create reports or workspace panels, and even help launch new bounded experiment iterations when a project is set up for it.
    
    Right now I’m looking at a W&B project with hundreds of runs, including a filtered workspace focused on runs that logged val/loss, grouped by iteration_group. That means I can do things like:
    • identify the best-performing run or group,
    • compare validation loss trends across iterations
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
    1-23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Artifacts
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney

Best model and next steps

Sweeney opens a long-running ARIA chat from over 200 auto-research experiments. ARIA reports the best run at 5.749383578384566 val_bpb and recommends exploring near width640 with 2400 steps.

Text in image
• tiny LR changes hurt:
  • 0.00095 → 5.8428
  • 0.00105 → 5.8544
• pushing to seq896 was not enough to win: 5.7946

Best model remains

run: rk6vjvz4
variant: WFF02_s768_w640_b28_2400
val_bpb: 5.749383578384566

The live encore didn’t break the record, but it gave us a much sharper map: stay near width640, lr=0.001, floor=0.03, 2400 steps, and explore stochastic repeats / seq800–832 carefully.

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:34:13
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb
Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITE[illegible]  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
1-23 of 23
Chart Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
Chart X-axis tick: 0
ARIA
Ask ARIA

4:13Demo milestone

Experiment comparisons

ARIA compares nearby runs and finds that changes to batch size, learning rate and steps did not beat the leading model. Sweeney says the long-running chat has used the auto research loop for over 200 experiments.

Text in image
The encore ruled out several nearby ideas:
• batch26 at seq768 was bad: 5.8901
• batch30 at seq768 was worse than batch28: 5.8577
• 2350 and 2450 steps were worse than 2400
• tiny LR changes hurt:
  • 0.00095 → 5.8428
  • 0.00105 → 5.8544
• pushing to seq896 was not enough to win: 5.7946

Best model remains
run: rk6vjvz4
variant: WFF02_s768_w640_b28_2400
val_bpb: 5.749383578384566

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:34:22
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney  wandb
Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor...  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo...
1-23 of 23
Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
ARIA
Ask ARIA

4:21Demo milestone

Choosing a new experiment batch

ARIA selects three leading configurations for a 12-run seedstorm, reasoning that variance within the winning configuration range could produce a new best result.

Text in image
ARIA

I’ll launch another 12-run Worlds Fair batch, weighted toward champion repeats and the closest runner-up shape.

shell  python - <<'PY' import wandb, json api=wandb.Api(timeout=120) path='aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent...
Thinking  Creating a script for seedstorm

Confirmed. Ignoring the toy smoke runs, the frontier top is still:
• rk6vjvz4 — seq768/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7494
• xjgxqrx[illegible] — seq832/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7551
• xnlnckfm — seq800/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7610

I’m launching a seedstorm wave: 12 runs concentrated on these three shapes, because the data says variance inside the winning basin is large enough that a new best can plausibly come from another favorable trajectory.

Ask ARIA

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:35:09
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
Tim Sweeney  wandb
Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
Runs  248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width512...  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo...
1–23 of 23
Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
X-axis tick: 0

5:09Demo milestone

Launch queue

Sweeney shows a Kubernetes Launch queue with finished runs. He explains that Launch connects compute clusters so people and agents can run experimentation jobs.

Text in image
Launch

autoresearch-k8s
aria-autoresearch-01  Queue  Kubernetes  Active  Prioritization

Runs  Agents  Config  Monitor

Completed and failed runs automatically clear after 30 days.

Search
1–20 of 100+

Run | Job | Project | Priority | Status | Errors | Author | Agent | Submitted ... | Start time | Duration
wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s
wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 37s
wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 38s
wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 29s
wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s

Interface text:
aria-autoresearch-01  Launch
Tim Sweeney  wandb
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:35:22
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/launch/[illegible]
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
Ask Gemini  Work

5:18Demo milestone

Experiment batch submitted

ARIA reports that its 12-run seedstorm is live, adds a run filter, and polls for results against the current record of 5.7493835784.

Text in image
ARIA

I’m launching a seedstorm wave: 12 runs concentrated on these three shapes, because the data says variance inside the winning basin is large enough that a new best can plausibly come from another favorable trajectory.

apply_patch /workspace/submit_worlds_fair_seedstorm_12_trainpy_docker_k8s.py

Seedstorm script is ready. Submitting all 12 to the K8s Launch queue now.

shell python -m py_compile /workspace/train_rope_swiglu_b128_frontier.py /workspace/submit_worlds_fair_se...

The 12-run seedstorm is live. I’ll add a filter button and poll for the live leaderboard.

Run Filter: worlds-fair seedstorm

Polling now. Current record to beat is 5.7493835784.

Ask ARIA

Tsweeney's workspace
Personal workspace
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter

NAME  NOTES  [illegible]  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-fa...  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor...  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo...
1-23 of 23

Y-axis ticks: 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:35:45
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
Tim Sweeney  wandb
Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts

5:45Demo milestone

Analyzing top runs

ARIA examines project metrics after a request to summarize the highest-performing runs. Tim Sweeney presents this as a way for a new team member or someone returning from time off to catch up on the research.

Text in image
ARIA

Can you please summarize the highest performing runs in this project?

Thinking  Analyzing project metrics
shell  grep -nE '^#{1,2}' skills/wbagent/references/RUN_OPS.md &&...
shell  sed -n '220,380p' skills/wbagent/references/RUN_OPS.md
Thinking  Summarizing run metrics
shell  python skills/wbagent/scripts/wandb_run_ops.py inspect-sch...
shell  python skills/wbagent/scripts/wandb_run_ops.py count-runs ...

Ask ARIA

Interface text:
Tsweeney's workspace
Personal workspace
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
Hypothesis: The lo...
1-23 of 23

Chart axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6

New chat
Quickly give a brief summary of th...
wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
Can you please summarize the hig...
Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIE...
Quickly give a brief summary of th...
wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
Can you please summarize the hig...
Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIE...
Yesterday
Quickly give a brief summary of th...
wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
hello there! introduce yourself to A...
Quickly give a brief summary of th...
wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...

Project
Workspace
Runs
Jobs
Automat.
Sweeps
Reports
Artifacts
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb

wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA
AIEng
D: Weave - Prod Logs
Metrics
To Review
My Stuff
Monitoring
My Work
Preso
Administration
Dev Tools
Products

6:01Demo milestone

A new best run family

ARIA identifies four rope + SwiGLU + batch 128 frontier runs as the top four by validation loss. The best scores 4.391, about 0.14 val/loss better than the previous science-plan best.

Text in image
[illegible] sampled val/loss history. The strongest hook is that your recent rope + SwiGLU + batch 128 frontier runs look like a clear step-change rather than a small incremental win.

Hooks worth investigating

1. A new best family has emerged.
The 4 rope-swiglu-b128-frontier runs are the top 4 by val/loss: best is RSB03_rope_swiglu_48x_b128_1250 at 4.391 val/loss / 6.334 val_bpb. The previous science-plan best, SP16_rope_swiglu_48x_b128, is 4.529, so the frontier set improved by about 0.14 val/loss.

2. The improvement is probably not just one lucky seed.

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:36:25
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
Tim Sweeney  wandb
Tsweeney's workspace
Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports
Runs  248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITEF
Hypothesis: Width7...  world...
Hypothesis: Width6...  conte...
Hypothesis: Width6...  capac...
Hypothesis: Width5...  width...
Hypothesis: Width
1-23  of [illegible]
ARIA
New chat
Hey - what can you do?
4. AR - Workspace Builder
can you please summarize the last ...
AR - Quickstart Empty
AR - Minimal
autoresearch-demo-01
3. AR - Summary Report
AR - Outlier Plot
2. AR - Find patterns
/autoresearch-quickstart
Ask ARIA

6:27Demo milestone

Consistency and batch size

ARIA finds four closely clustered frontier losses and a batch-size signal: median val/loss is 4.681 at batch size 128 versus 5.854 at 16. The report cautions that later experiment waves confound the comparison.

Text in image
by about 0.14 val/loss.

2. The improvement is probably not just one lucky seed.
The frontier quartet is tightly clustered: 4.391, 4.431, 4.435, 4.478. That consistency is more interesting than the single best run.

3. Batch size looks like a major lever.
Across runs with val/loss, the best batch_size=128 run is 4.391 and median is 4.681; batch_size=64 best is 4.591 / median 4.969; batch_size=16 median is much worse at 5.854. This is confounded with later experiment waves, but it is a strong signal.

Interface text:
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb
Tsweeney's workspace
ARIA
Project
Workspace
Runs
Jobs
Automat.
Sweeps
Reports
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME
NOTES
Hypothesis: Very sli...
Hypothesis: Width7...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width
New chat
Hey - what can you do?
4. AR - Workspace Builder
can you please summarize the last ...
AR - Quickstart Empty
AR - Minimal
autoresearch-demo-01
3. AR - Summary Report
AR - Outlier Plot
2. AR - Find patterns
/autoresearch-quickstart
Ask ARIA

6:35Demo milestone

Architecture patterns

ARIA flags RoPE and SwiGLU as a promising recipe. SwiGLU runs have a median val/loss of 4.503 across 8 runs, versus 5.505 across 123 GELU runs; RoPE runs have a median of 4.478.

Text in image
Across runs with val/loss, the best batch_size=128 run is 4.391 and median is 4.681; batch_size=64 best is 4.591 / median 4.969; batch_size=16 median is much worse at 5.854. This is confounded with later experiment waves, but it is a strong signal.

4. Rope + SwiGLU appears repeatedly in the winning recipe.
activation=swiglu has best 4.391 / median 4.503 across 8 runs, while gelu has best 4.697 / median 5.505 across 123 runs. pos_type=rope similarly has best 4.391 / median 4.478. This looks like a high-value architecture hook.

5. The science-plan phase already identified the recipe before the frontier phase amplified it.

Interface text:
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb
Tsweeney's workspace
Project
Workspace
Runs 248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITER
Hypothesis: Very sli...
Hypothesis: Width7...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width
Jobs
Automat.
Sweeps
Reports
ARIA
New chat
Hey - what can you do?
4. AR - Workspace Builder
can you please summarize the last ...
AR - Quickstart Empty
AR - Minimal
autoresearch-demo-01
3. AR - Summary Report
AR - Outlier Plot
2. AR - Find patterns
/autoresearch-quickstart
Ask ARIA

6:39Demo milestone

ARIA report evidence

Sweeney asks ARIA to create a Weights & Biases report. The response lists loss curves, comparison charts, scatter plots, and a panel for training and validation curves and likely next ablations.

Text in image
Visual evidence included in the report:
• Validation-loss curves for the top runs.
• Final validation-loss and best-bpb bar charts.
• Science-plan architecture comparison charts.
• Scatter plots for model size, batch size, and steps versus validation loss.
• A frontier-focused panel section showing training/validation curves and the likely next ablations.

Interface text:
Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
Wed Jul 1 13:36:50
wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
Tim Sweeney
wandb
Tsweeney's workspace
Project
Workspace
Runs
Jobs
Automat.
Sweeps
Reports
Runs  248
Search runs
1 filter
NAME  NOTES  ITER
Hypothesis: Very sli...
Hypothesis: Width7...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width6...
Hypothesis: Width
1-24 of [illegible]
ARIA
New chat
Hey - what can you do?
4. AR - Workspace Builder
can you please summarize the last ...
AR - Quickstart Empty
AR - Minimal
autoresearch-demo-01
3. AR - Summary Report
AR - Outlier Plot
2. AR - Find patterns
/autoresearch-quickstart
Ask ARIA

6:54Demo milestone

Read the talk

An AI Research Agent That Runs Your Experiments

ARIA turns a research request into GPU jobs, experiment analysis, and visual reports inside Weights & Biases. A live batch shows how that loop works; the team's own traces and nightly evaluations show how they decide whether the agent itself is improving.

From a talk by Tim Sweeney

At a glance

Ideas worth remembering

  • Keep long-running training outside the agent's main loop: ARIA starts experiments through Launch and polls while GPU jobs execute.

  • Evaluate useful research behavior along separate dimensions: the example task checks correctness, interesting insights, and a six-tool-call limit.

  • Production traces become more useful when human review and live judges turn observed behavior into repeatable tasks and candidate evaluations.

  • Domain context and available tools are practical places to improve an agent before adding elaborate harness or memory machinery.

  • The live batch completed 12 experiments and nearly matched the earlier best result; autonomous execution did not guarantee a better model.

Start with a project that already has 200 experiments

A research workspace can accumulate experiments faster than a person can explain them. Tim Sweeney, Principal Engineer at Weights & Biases by CoreWeave, opens a project with more than 200 training jobs. A scatter plot shows loss declining over time. The next problem is deciding what those runs teach—and what experiment to run next.

Source frame: Start with a project that already has 200 experimentsOpen full source frame
Source frame: Start with a project that already has 200 experiments

The project uses Karpathy's autoresearch, a small codebase that trains an LLM and provides a manageable setting for repeated changes. ARIA, the AI research and iteration agent, opens as a chat inside the workspace. Project context and images can accompany a request, so the conversation can begin with the experiment data already close at hand.

The useful starting point is a long-running conversation rather than the agent's onstage introduction. In that conversation, ARIA has helped download the code, configure Launch jobs, and set up GPUs. It can then iterate on both the code and its hyperparameters. Those are different kinds of changes: one alters the implementation being trained; the other changes how that implementation trains.

0:150:17
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0:13 · section reference included

A chat request becomes a batch of GPU jobs

Sweeney asks ARIA to conduct another batch of experiments and try to find the best model live. He adds encouragement—because, naturally, the models need encouragement. The consequential decision comes next: ARIA avoids a large architecture change, treating it as too risky for this iteration. Sweeney expects it to try hyperparameter modifications instead, and a shell call starts the experimentation loop.

Source frame: A chat request becomes a batch of GPU jobsOpen full source frame
Source frame: A chat request becomes a batch of GPU jobs

W&B Launch supplies the connection to compute. A Launch queue lets humans or agents submit long-running experiment jobs to a cluster, including jobs that need GPUs. Sweeney opens terminal output from his Kubernetes cluster to show experiments executing, then returns to ARIA, which is polling while it waits for the work to finish. The chat initiates and monitors the work; the cluster performs the training.

Where does the time-consuming work happen after a research request? The flow below separates the agent's decision and shell execution from queued GPU training. The polling path makes the separation visible: launching a job does not mean its result is immediately available.

From request to running experiments

Research requestConduct another batch and look for a better model.
ARIAChooses an experiment direction and starts a shell call.
W&B Launch queueConnects submitted experiment jobs to compute.
Kubernetes GPU clusterRuns the training experiments.
ARIA starts the experiment loop, Launch connects it to GPU compute, and the agent polls while training proceeds.
Read the diagram as text
  • Research request. Conduct another batch and look for a better model.
  • ARIA. Chooses an experiment direction and starts a shell call.
  • W&B Launch queue. Connects submitted experiment jobs to compute.
  • Kubernetes GPU cluster. Runs the training experiments.
  • Research request → ARIA: Starts a new iteration.
  • ARIA → W&B Launch queue: Starts experiment jobs.
  • W&B Launch queue → Kubernetes GPU cluster: Launches on compute.
  • ARIA → W&B Launch queue: Polls for completion.
4:334:35
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4:30 · section reference included

Turn accumulated runs into explanations and charts

While training runs, a second request asks for a summary of the project's highest-performing runs. This is useful when a teammate joins a project or returns from time away: the experiment history needs to become an explanation of what worked. A previously prepared pattern-finding example goes further, identifying an emerging model family, batch size as an influential parameter, and a promising architectural recipe. These are leads for further research, rather than a demonstrated guarantee that any one change causes an improvement.

Source frame: Turn accumulated runs into explanations and chartsOpen full source frame
Source frame: Turn accumulated runs into explanations and charts

The analysis can become a native W&B artifact rather than remaining a chat answer:

  • Reports: A report combines Markdown with embedded plots, charts, and graphics—Sweeney calls it a “markdown file on steroids.” The example includes a project thesis, data panels, and a parameter-importance chart showing relationships among parameters.
  • Workspaces: ARIA is tuned and prompted to construct workspaces and plots using W&B's built-in chart types. That gives the analysis a form colleagues can inspect in the interface they already use.

A check-in shows the summary request querying W&B, applying patches, and writing code, while the training conversation continues polling for results. Analysis and training therefore have their own work to complete. ARIA's value here comes from connecting research data, executable tools, and visualization primitives within the same product.

The iOS announcement extends that workflow to a phone: researchers can steer hyperparameter-tuning jobs while away from their desks. The larger ambition is an end-to-end automated research platform that handles job orchestration, GPU workloads, research lookup, and hypothesis collaboration. Sweeney frames the division of labor around letting ARIA handle mechanics while researchers concentrate on new ideas, architectures, and parameters.

6:026:03
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5:55 · section reference included

Separate conversation handling from long-running compute

ARIA's backend begins with a familiar sequence: web and iOS clients communicate with an API server, the server writes to a turn database, and a worker harness processes the work. The harness then connects to the capabilities needed to carry out a research request.

Source frame: Separate conversation handling from long-running computeOpen full source frame
Source frame: Separate conversation handling from long-running compute

Those connections serve distinct purposes:

  • Sandbox execution: Shell calls and Python data-science work give the agent a way to manipulate code and analyze data.
  • Model inference: An LLM provider supplies the model calls used by the worker; W&B Inference is presented as one option.
  • External training: Launch handles workloads outside the agent's main loop, including training that can take days, with CoreWeave GPUs supplying compute.
  • Observability: Sessions, turns, tool calls, and errors are logged so the team can inspect what the agent actually did. Sweeney says ARIA logs 100% of its traces to W&B Weave.

The trace store also feeds development. Offline work turns observed behavior into tasks, evaluates candidate agents, and records results in a shared dashboard. One loop improves the tests; another forms hypotheses, implements candidates, and studies their evaluation results. The loops are complementary but also adversarial: better tests can expose weaknesses in a candidate that previously looked promising. The selected agent returns to production through a registry.

10:3010:32
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10:12 · section reference included

Read the shape of a conversation, then inspect its failures

The Weave dashboard gives a bird's-eye view through span volume, conversation volume, and token tracking. Sweeney then opens a conversation feed filtered to internal employees. Its span view makes trace topology visible: different colors and shapes distinguish tool calls, LLM calls, and thinking blocks. Opening a conversation reveals the system prompt, user messages, shell calls, and reasoning blocks behind that shape.

Source frame: Read the shape of a conversation, then inspect its failuresOpen full source frame
Source frame: Read the shape of a conversation, then inspect its failures

That detailed view is where the research lead, engineer, and product manager add notes and feedback before turning behavioral discoveries into tasks. A contextual Summarize button can also start an ARIA conversation about the item being inspected. In this example, ARIA analyzes one of its own conversations to recommend improvements to ARIA. The agent assists the review, while the team still has the underlying trace available.

Signals add automated triage to live traffic. LLM judges flag user frustration, low-quality responses, and other behaviors, helping the team find clusters to address in a later iteration. One displayed judge identifies frustration because the user expresses dissatisfaction with a loss curve. Its reasoning is inspectable, which gives reviewers a concrete explanation to assess rather than just a flag. The flag identifies dissatisfaction; it does not by itself establish what caused the poor experience.

13:1313:15
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12:59 · section reference included

Turn observed behavior into nightly tests

A task is a YAML file that acts as a unit test for the agent. The demonstrated prompt asks ARIA to compare two runs that both give good results: what differs, and what can be learned? The task pairs that request with definitions of success. This makes a broad product expectation—give useful research advice—specific enough to evaluate repeatedly.

Source frame: Turn observed behavior into nightly testsOpen full source frame
Source frame: Turn observed behavior into nightly tests

The example checks three separate properties:

  • Correctness: An LLM judge evaluates the answer against correctness defined for this particular question.
  • Interesting insights: A second LLM judge asks whether the comparison produces insights worth knowing. A correct answer can still be unhelpful.
  • Expediency: A rule-based judge checks whether the agent produces a result within six tool calls, giving efficiency an explicit test alongside answer quality.

About 200 tasks form a suite that runs nightly, with results tracked in Weave. The displayed candidate scores 73%, compared with the production model's 72%; Sweeney says the team plans to move it forward that Friday. These scores describe performance on the team's suite. The recording does not establish whether the one-percentage-point difference is statistically significant or predicts improvement outside that suite.

How does a production conversation influence the next release? The cycle below shows the intermediate steps: review produces tasks, tasks test candidates, and the results inform a team decision. Production traces provide the starting material; they become useful release evidence only after the team defines the behavior it wants to test.

The agent improvement loop

Production tracesCollect conversations and agent actions.
Behavior reviewHumans, ARIA, and LLM judges identify useful patterns and failures.
YAML tasksDefine prompts and checks for desired behavior.
Candidate evaluationsRun the nightly suite and compare results in Weave.
Team release decisionUse shared results to select and promote an agent.
Live behavior supplies examples; explicit tasks and candidate evaluations turn those examples into release decisions.
Read the diagram as text
  • Production traces. Collect conversations and agent actions.
  • Behavior review. Humans, ARIA, and LLM judges identify useful patterns and failures.
  • YAML tasks. Define prompts and checks for desired behavior.
  • Candidate evaluations. Run the nightly suite and compare results in Weave.
  • Team release decision. Use shared results to select and promote an agent.
  • Production traces → Behavior review: Inspect behavior.
  • Behavior review → YAML tasks: Turn findings into tests.
  • YAML tasks → Candidate evaluations: Test candidates nightly.
  • Candidate evaluations → Team release decision: Compare and decide.
  • Team release decision → Production traces: Return the selected agent to production.
16:1016:12
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16:02 · section reference included

Keep humans in the loop—and let the experiment finish

The production advice follows directly from this development loop:

  • Instrument behavior: Log sessions, turns, tools, and feedback to catch behavioral bugs. An agent can complete its calls without producing the behavior a user needs.
  • Use evaluations for decisions: Researchers and engineers should develop tasks together and treat performance metrics as go/no-go evidence.
  • Keep human judgment: Use the product and review its best and worst traces as a team. LLM judges miss behavioral nuances, so automated scores cannot cover the whole review.
  • Improve context and tools: Before adding elaborate harness or memory machinery, give the agent the business domain, available primitives, and relevant business data. Sweeney's team found substantial opportunities in those simpler additions.
Source frame: Keep humans in the loop—and let the experiment finishOpen full source frame
Source frame: Keep humans in the loop—and let the experiment finish

The final check returns to the batch started onstage. A new point has appeared in the workspace, and the batch has run 12 experiments. The reported result is 5.833, close to the earlier best but without beating it. ARIA has carried a request through experiment selection, shell execution, queued GPU training, waiting, and a visible result. The automation completed a research iteration; an improvement remained something the experiments had to earn.

18:5119:01
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18:43 · section reference included

Resources

From the talk

  • The tracing and evaluation product used in the talk to inspect conversations, run live judge signals, and compare nightly candidate results.

Read the complete timestamped transcript

0 slide groups · 11 demo milestones. Extracted from the recording; expand builds to follow changes. Timestamps are approximate. 36 additional groups were omitted from this pass.

  1. 0:01

    [music]

  2. 0:13

    Okay. Hello everyone and thank you for

  3. 0:15

    attending this session. My name is Tim

  4. 0:17

    Sweeney, a principal engineer at Weights

  5. 0:20

    and Biases and Coreweave. And for the

  6. 0:22

    next 20 minutes, we're going to talk

  7. 0:23

    about Arya, our new AI research and

  8. 0:26

    iteration agent. Let's go ahead and get

  9. 0:28

    started.

  10. 0:29

    So, uh, first off, just by way of making

  11. 0:32

    some noise, some clapping, uh, who here,

  12. 0:35

    um, identifies as an ML researcher?

  13. 0:37

    You're someone that trains models,

  14. 0:38

    trains the brain?

  15. 0:41

    I heard one. Wow. Okay. Great work.

  16. 0:43

    Great work. Uh, what about who here is

  17. 0:45

    the applied engineer, the namesake of

  18. 0:47

    this conference? Who here actually

  19. 0:48

    builds the bots?

  20. 0:50

    >> Okay, good. Expected much more. And who

  21. 0:53

    here is in AI management? You are

  22. 0:55

    helping fund this compute.

  23. 0:58

    Okay. Okay. Nice. From the back. Lovely.

  24. 1:01

    Um, well, now that I know a little bit

  25. 1:02

    about you, just a little bit about me.

  26. 1:04

    Uh, again, my name is Tim. I have a

  27. 1:06

    masters in machine learning, uh, and

  28. 1:07

    reinforcement learning from Georgia

  29. 1:09

    Tech. So, I've been that, uh, researcher

  30. 1:11

    currently building Weights and Biases

  31. 1:13

    agent, Arya. So, identify as that

  32. 1:15

    applied engineer. And in a previous life

  33. 1:18

    was the PM of Twitter's ML stack. So, I

  34. 1:21

    hope you hopefully can connect with you

  35. 1:22

    middle management as well. [laughter]

  36. 1:24

    >> [gasps]

  37. 1:24

    >> Um today's agenda is kind of broken into

  38. 1:27

    three sections and hopefully each of you

  39. 1:29

    personas walk away with something

  40. 1:30

    valuable. So first we're going to learn

  41. 1:32

    about Arya itself and how it can

  42. 1:34

    supercharge your AI and ML workflows.

  43. 1:37

    We're going to dive into auto research

  44. 1:38

    and see that live in a live demo in just

  45. 1:40

    a moment.

  46. 1:42

    Then we're going to pull back the

  47. 1:43

    curtain and learn how we use weights and

  48. 1:44

    biases and uh coreweave to actually

  49. 1:47

    build Arya because a lot of you in the

  50. 1:49

    audience are building agents yourself

  51. 1:50

    and we believe a lot of these components

  52. 1:52

    can help you in your endeavors. And then

  53. 1:54

    towards the end we'll just take a step

  54. 1:56

    back and identify a few key tips and

  55. 1:58

    tricks for making sure that you're able

  56. 1:59

    to productionize your systems

  57. 2:00

    effectively.

  58. 2:02

    For those of you who might not be

  59. 2:03

    familiar, Weights and Biases is the

  60. 2:05

    world's leading AI development platform.

  61. 2:07

    We've been in business now for nine

  62. 2:09

    years and have happily joined the core

  63. 2:11

    family about a year ago. Uh we have a

  64. 2:13

    number of products in our suite but are

  65. 2:15

    really known for our models training

  66. 2:17

    inference and weave stack which really

  67. 2:19

    helps collect data uh about the AI

  68. 2:21

    development and machine learning

  69. 2:22

    workflows and makes that information

  70. 2:24

    actionable and uh enables users to make

  71. 2:27

    the best decisions about what to do

  72. 2:28

    next.

  73. 2:30

    So without further ado, let's go ahead

  74. 2:32

    and dive into Arya, our agent. Uh we'll

  75. 2:34

    show a demo and then we'll get back to

  76. 2:35

    some slides.

  77. 2:40

    Okay, beautiful.

  78. 2:42

    Let's make this a bit bigger. Holler at

  79. 2:44

    me if you need it to be bigger. So, uh,

  80. 2:46

    what you're looking at here is a weights

  81. 2:48

    and biases workspace. For you, for

  82. 2:50

    anybody that isn't familiar, on the

  83. 2:51

    lefth hand side, I actually see a list

  84. 2:53

    of a bunch of different experiments. In

  85. 2:55

    this particular project, I have over 200

  86. 2:57

    training jobs. And on the right hand

  87. 3:00

    side, I see a scatter plot of, in this

  88. 3:02

    case, declining metrics, which is good.

  89. 3:04

    means our loss is going down over time.

  90. 3:06

    And this view would be very familiar for

  91. 3:08

    anyone that uses our tool. Now, to

  92. 3:10

    ground this, we're actually uh uh using

  93. 3:13

    the Carpathy Auto Research project,

  94. 3:15

    which I'm sure many of you are familiar

  95. 3:16

    with, but if you're not, it's just a

  96. 3:18

    very simple project that trains an LLM,

  97. 3:20

    and it's a great foundation for auto

  98. 3:23

    research type demonstrations because

  99. 3:25

    it's a very simple codebase and allows

  100. 3:27

    us to improve iteratively over time. So,

  101. 3:30

    let's jump back to the project and open

  102. 3:31

    up Arya by clicking this blue button in

  103. 3:33

    the upper right. When I click this

  104. 3:35

    button, I'm uh presented with the

  105. 3:37

    familiar chat interface with, you know,

  106. 3:39

    how can I help you today, a few call to

  107. 3:40

    actions, and you know, I can add

  108. 3:43

    different context in my project or maybe

  109. 3:45

    add images, etc. Um, everyone here is

  110. 3:48

    agent builders, so I don't need to bore

  111. 3:49

    you with the details of what an agent

  112. 3:51

    interface looks like. But let's go ahead

  113. 3:53

    and just, you know, enter in a basic

  114. 3:55

    intro here. Let's say, "Hello, Arya.

  115. ARIA introduction

    Sweeney asks ARIA to introduce itself. ARIA describes analyzing experiments and says it is looking at a filtered workspace of runs logging val/loss, grouped by iteration_group.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
    1-23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Artifacts
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney

    3:56Demo milestone

    Show 2 builds
    1. 3:56

      The assistant panel shows a submitted introduction prompt and a loading indicator.

      Text in image
      ARIA
      
      Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
      
      Ask ARIA
      
      Interface text:
      Tsweeney's workspace
      Personal workspace
      Runs 248
      Search runs
      1 filter
      NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
      Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
      Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
      Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
      Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
      Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
      Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
      Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
      1-23 of 23
      Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
      Project
      Workspace
      Runs
      Jobs
      Automat.
      Sweeps
      Reports
      Artifacts
      aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
      Tim Sweeney
      wandb
      wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    2. 4:04

      ARIA introduces itself and describes analyzing experiments in a W&B workspace.

      Text in image
      ARIA
      
      Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
      
      Hello AI Engineer Worlds Fair 2026! 👋
      
      I’m ARIA — the AI Research and Iteration Agent inside Weights & Biases.
      
      I help researchers and engineers move faster from “what happened?” to “what should we try next?” I can inspect W&B projects, compare experiment runs, analyze metrics and configs, debug failed or slow jobs, summarize Weave traces and evaluations, create reports or workspace panels, and even help launch new bounded experiment iterations when a project is set up for it.
      
      Right now I’m looking at a W&B project with hundreds of runs, including a filtered workspace focused on runs that logged val/loss, grouped by iteration_group. That means I can do things like:
      • identify the best-performing run or group,
      • compare validation loss trends across iterations
      
      Ask ARIA
      
      Interface text:
      Tsweeney's workspace
      Personal workspace
      Runs 248
      Search runs
      1 filter
      NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
      Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
      Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
      Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
      Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
      Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
      Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
      Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
      1-23 of 23
      Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
      Project
      Workspace
      Runs
      Jobs
      Automat.
      Sweeps
      Reports
      Artifacts
      aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
      Tim Sweeney
      wandb
      wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
  116. 3:58

    You're on stage at AI World's Fair 2026.

  117. 4:00

    Please introduce yourself." So, it's

  118. 4:02

    going to go ahead and chug along and

  119. 4:03

    hopefully emit some sort of nice emoji.

  120. 4:06

    Yay. He I'm Arya. I'm talking to the

  121. 4:08

    audience. Great. But now, let's dive

  122. 4:10

    into the meat of why you came here. So,

  123. 4:13

    I'm going to open up this chat here. And

  124. Best model and next steps

    Sweeney opens a long-running ARIA chat from over 200 auto-research experiments. ARIA reports the best run at 5.749383578384566 val_bpb and recommends exploring near width640 with 2400 steps.

    Text in image
    • tiny LR changes hurt:
      • 0.00095 → 5.8428
      • 0.00105 → 5.8544
    • pushing to seq896 was not enough to win: 5.7946
    
    Best model remains
    
    run: rk6vjvz4
    variant: WFF02_s768_w640_b28_2400
    val_bpb: 5.749383578384566
    
    The live encore didn’t break the record, but it gave us a much sharper map: stay near width640, lr=0.001, floor=0.03, 2400 steps, and explore stochastic repeats / seq800–832 carefully.
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:34:13
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
    Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITE[illegible]  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
    1-23 of 23
    Chart Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    Chart X-axis tick: 0
    ARIA
    Ask ARIA

    4:13Demo milestone

  125. 4:15

    this is a longunning chat where I've

  126. 4:17

    been running again over 200 experiments

  127. 4:19

    using the auto research loop. Um, it

  128. Experiment comparisons

    ARIA compares nearby runs and finds that changes to batch size, learning rate and steps did not beat the leading model. Sweeney says the long-running chat has used the auto research loop for over 200 experiments.

    Text in image
    The encore ruled out several nearby ideas:
    • batch26 at seq768 was bad: 5.8901
    • batch30 at seq768 was worse than batch28: 5.8577
    • 2350 and 2450 steps were worse than 2400
    • tiny LR changes hurt:
      • 0.00095 → 5.8428
      • 0.00105 → 5.8544
    • pushing to seq896 was not enough to win: 5.7946
    
    Best model remains
    run: rk6vjvz4
    variant: WFF02_s768_w640_b28_2400
    val_bpb: 5.749383578384566
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:34:22
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
    Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor...  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo...
    1-23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    ARIA
    Ask ARIA

    4:21Demo milestone

  129. 4:22

    helped me download the code, set up my

  130. 4:24

    launch jobs, set up my GPUs, and is able

  131. 4:26

    to autonomously iterate on the code

  132. 4:28

    itself and the hyperparameters.

  133. 4:30

    We'll take a look at what it's doing in

  134. 4:31

    a moment, but while we're doing this,

  135. 4:33

    I'm going to kick off a live iteration

  136. 4:35

    right here. So, what I'm going to say is

  137. ARIA introduction

    Sweeney asks ARIA to introduce itself. ARIA describes analyzing experiments and says it is looking at a filtered workspace of runs logging val/loss, grouped by iteration_group.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIEngineer Worlds Fair 2026! Please introduce yourself!
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f[illegible]  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity[illegible]  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51[illegible]  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo[illegible]
    1-23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Artifacts
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney

    4:36Demo milestone

  138. 4:37

    please conduct another batch of

  139. 4:39

    experiments. You are on stage at the AI

  140. 4:41

    Engineer Worlds Fair 2026 and we're

  141. 4:44

    hoping to find the best model live. I

  142. 4:46

    believe in you. Uh, because we know we

  143. 4:48

    have to encourage our models. Um, so

  144. 4:50

    it's been doing this for a while. What

  145. 4:51

    it what it's doing here is it's saying,

  146. 4:53

    "Okay, great. Um, I don't want to make a

  147. 4:55

    big architecture swing. That feels a

  148. 4:57

    little bit too risky." So, it's probably

  149. 4:58

    going to go for uh some modifications to

  150. 5:01

    the hyperparameters. And then it's

  151. 5:03

    kicking off a shell call here that is

  152. 5:05

    actually um executing that uh executing

  153. 5:08

    that experimentation loop. And we're

  154. Choosing a new experiment batch

    ARIA selects three leading configurations for a 12-run seedstorm, reasoning that variance within the winning configuration range could produce a new best result.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    I’ll launch another 12-run Worlds Fair batch, weighted toward champion repeats and the closest runner-up shape.
    
    shell  python - <<'PY' import wandb, json api=wandb.Api(timeout=120) path='aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent...
    Thinking  Creating a script for seedstorm
    
    Confirmed. Ignoring the toy smoke runs, the frontier top is still:
    • rk6vjvz4 — seq768/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7494
    • xjgxqrx[illegible] — seq832/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7551
    • xnlnckfm — seq800/w640/b28/2400 — 5.7610
    
    I’m launching a seedstorm wave: 12 runs concentrated on these three shapes, because the data says variance inside the winning basin is large enough that a new best can plausibly come from another favorable trajectory.
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:35:09
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace  Personal workspace
    Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts
    Runs  248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width512...  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo...
    1–23 of 23
    Y-axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    X-axis tick: 0

    5:09Demo milestone

  155. 5:10

    going to check in on this periodically

  156. 5:11

    throughout this presentation.

  157. 5:13

    But I want to help explain what's going

  158. 5:15

    on behind the scenes. So behind the

  159. 5:17

    scenes I have set up a weights and

  160. Launch queue

    Sweeney shows a Kubernetes Launch queue with finished runs. He explains that Launch connects compute clusters so people and agents can run experimentation jobs.

    Text in image
    Launch
    
    autoresearch-k8s
    aria-autoresearch-01  Queue  Kubernetes  Active  Prioritization
    
    Runs  Agents  Config  Monitor
    
    Completed and failed runs automatically clear after 30 days.
    
    Search
    1–20 of 100+
    
    Run | Job | Project | Priority | Status | Errors | Author | Agent | Submitted ... | Start time | Duration
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 37s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 38s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 29s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s
    
    Interface text:
    aria-autoresearch-01  Launch
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:35:22
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/launch/[illegible]
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    Ask Gemini  Work

    5:18Demo milestone

  161. 5:19

    biases launch queue. Launch is our our

  162. 5:21

    product that allows you to connect your

  163. 5:23

    compute clusters and allows humans and

  164. 5:25

    agents to launch longunning

  165. 5:27

    experimentation jobs particularly by

  166. 5:29

    leveraging GPUs.

  167. 5:31

    Here I'm looking at a uh a terminal

  168. 5:33

    output of my Kubernetes cluster where

  169. 5:35

    we're actually seeing live execution of

  170. 5:37

    experiments happening. So this is

  171. 5:39

    happening live right here. This is not a

  172. Launch queue

    Sweeney shows a Kubernetes Launch queue with finished runs. He explains that Launch connects compute clusters so people and agents can run experimentation jobs.

    Text in image
    Launch
    
    autoresearch-k8s
    aria-autoresearch-01  Queue  Kubernetes  Active  Prioritization
    
    Runs  Agents  Config  Monitor
    
    Completed and failed runs automatically clear after 30 days.
    
    Search
    1–20 of 100+
    
    Run | Job | Project | Priority | Status | Errors | Author | Agent | Submitted ... | Start time | Duration
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 37s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 38s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 29s
    wfe-dock... | | wandb_ager | Medium | Finished | | tsweeney | cdek997f | Jul 1st 2026 at 11:58am | Jul 1st 2026 at 12:02pm | 1m 30s
    
    Interface text:
    aria-autoresearch-01  Launch
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:35:22
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/launch/[illegible]
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    Ask Gemini  Work

    5:40Demo milestone

  173. 5:40

    fake demo. Um great. And if we jump

  174. 5:44

    back, we see that at this point it

  175. Experiment batch submitted

    ARIA reports that its 12-run seedstorm is live, adds a run filter, and polls for results against the current record of 5.7493835784.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    I’m launching a seedstorm wave: 12 runs concentrated on these three shapes, because the data says variance inside the winning basin is large enough that a new best can plausibly come from another favorable trajectory.
    
    apply_patch /workspace/submit_worlds_fair_seedstorm_12_trainpy_docker_k8s.py
    
    Seedstorm script is ready. Submitting all 12 to the K8s Launch queue now.
    
    shell python -m py_compile /workspace/train_rope_swiglu_b128_frontier.py /workspace/submit_worlds_fair_se...
    
    The 12-run seedstorm is live. I’ll add a filter button and poll for the live leaderboard.
    
    Run Filter: worlds-fair seedstorm
    
    Polling now. Current record to beat is 5.7493835784.
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    
    NAME  NOTES  [illegible]  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-fa...  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor...  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo...
    1-23 of 23
    
    Y-axis ticks: 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:35:45
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports  Artifacts

    5:45Demo milestone

  176. 5:46

    started the cues and now it is simply

  177. 5:48

    polling and waiting for our work to be

  178. 5:50

    complete. So we'll jump back to that in

  179. 5:52

    a in a moment. But before but let's dive

  180. 5:55

    into a few other examples. So uh

  181. 5:57

    something else that is interesting you

  182. 5:59

    can do is maybe you might want to ask it

  183. Analyzing top runs

    ARIA examines project metrics after a request to summarize the highest-performing runs. Tim Sweeney presents this as a way for a new team member or someone returning from time off to catch up on the research.

    Text in image
    ARIA
    
    Can you please summarize the highest performing runs in this project?
    
    Thinking  Analyzing project metrics
    shell  grep -nE '^#{1,2}' skills/wbagent/references/RUN_OPS.md &&...
    shell  sed -n '220,380p' skills/wbagent/references/RUN_OPS.md
    Thinking  Summarizing run metrics
    shell  python skills/wbagent/scripts/wandb_run_ops.py inspect-sch...
    shell  python skills/wbagent/scripts/wandb_run_ops.py count-runs ...
    
    Ask ARIA
    
    Interface text:
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Personal workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF  VAL_B
    Hypothesis: Width7...  worlds-f...  5.83786
    Hypothesis: Width6...  context1  5.88779
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capacity...  6.03687
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width51...  6.0273
    Hypothesis: Width5...  maxdata  6.08972
    Hypothesis: Test w...  long-hor  6.18444
    Hypothesis: The lo...
    1-23 of 23
    
    Chart axis ticks: 11.5, 11, 10.5, 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5, 6
    
    New chat
    Quickly give a brief summary of th...
    wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
    Can you please summarize the hig...
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIE...
    Quickly give a brief summary of th...
    wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
    Can you please summarize the hig...
    Hello ARIA, you are on stage at AIE...
    Yesterday
    Quickly give a brief summary of th...
    wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
    hello there! introduce yourself to A...
    Quickly give a brief summary of th...
    wb-agent-team/wandb-agent-p...
    
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Artifacts
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA
    AIEng
    D: Weave - Prod Logs
    Metrics
    To Review
    My Stuff
    Monitoring
    My Work
    Preso
    Administration
    Dev Tools
    Products

    6:01Demo milestone

  184. 6:02

    something like please summarize the

  185. 6:03

    highest performing runs in this project.

  186. 6:05

    This use case would be something like

  187. 6:06

    maybe a new user come or a new uh team

  188. 6:08

    member is joining your project and want

  189. 6:10

    to understand the research. Um or maybe

  190. 6:12

    you've uh someone's been doing some work

  191. 6:14

    while you were on PTO and you want to

  192. 6:16

    get caught up. We'll see what this comes

  193. 6:17

    up with in a moment. Some other

  194. 6:19

    pre-anned uh examples are finding

  195. 6:21

    patterns in your project. So here we can

  196. 6:24

    see that I asked it, hey, can you find

  197. 6:26

    some patterns in this research? And we

  198. A new best run family

    ARIA identifies four rope + SwiGLU + batch 128 frontier runs as the top four by validation loss. The best scores 4.391, about 0.14 val/loss better than the previous science-plan best.

    Text in image
    [illegible] sampled val/loss history. The strongest hook is that your recent rope + SwiGLU + batch 128 frontier runs look like a clear step-change rather than a small incremental win.
    
    Hooks worth investigating
    
    1. A new best family has emerged.
    The 4 rope-swiglu-b128-frontier runs are the top 4 by val/loss: best is RSB03_rope_swiglu_48x_b128_1250 at 4.391 val/loss / 6.334 val_bpb. The previous science-plan best, SP16_rope_swiglu_48x_b128, is 4.529, so the frontier set improved by about 0.14 val/loss.
    
    2. The improvement is probably not just one lucky seed.
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:36:25
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01  Projects  wandb_agent_default_pr...  Workspace
    Tim Sweeney  wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Project  Workspace  Runs  Jobs  Automat.  Sweeps  Reports
    Runs  248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITEF
    Hypothesis: Width7...  world...
    Hypothesis: Width6...  conte...
    Hypothesis: Width6...  capac...
    Hypothesis: Width5...  width...
    Hypothesis: Width
    1-23  of [illegible]
    ARIA
    New chat
    Hey - what can you do?
    4. AR - Workspace Builder
    can you please summarize the last ...
    AR - Quickstart Empty
    AR - Minimal
    autoresearch-demo-01
    3. AR - Summary Report
    AR - Outlier Plot
    2. AR - Find patterns
    /autoresearch-quickstart
    Ask ARIA

    6:27Demo milestone

  199. 6:28

    see that um it identified that a new

  200. 6:30

    family of models emerged as the as the

  201. 6:33

    auto uh auto research was happening. Uh

  202. Consistency and batch size

    ARIA finds four closely clustered frontier losses and a batch-size signal: median val/loss is 4.681 at batch size 128 versus 5.854 at 16. The report cautions that later experiment waves confound the comparison.

    Text in image
    by about 0.14 val/loss.
    
    2. The improvement is probably not just one lucky seed.
    The frontier quartet is tightly clustered: 4.391, 4.431, 4.435, 4.478. That consistency is more interesting than the single best run.
    
    3. Batch size looks like a major lever.
    Across runs with val/loss, the best batch_size=128 run is 4.391 and median is 4.681; batch_size=64 best is 4.591 / median 4.969; batch_size=16 median is much worse at 5.854. This is confounded with later experiment waves, but it is a strong signal.
    
    Interface text:
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace
    ARIA
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME
    NOTES
    Hypothesis: Very sli...
    Hypothesis: Width7...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width
    New chat
    Hey - what can you do?
    4. AR - Workspace Builder
    can you please summarize the last ...
    AR - Quickstart Empty
    AR - Minimal
    autoresearch-demo-01
    3. AR - Summary Report
    AR - Outlier Plot
    2. AR - Find patterns
    /autoresearch-quickstart
    Ask ARIA

    6:35Demo milestone

  203. 6:35

    it identified that batch size seems to

  204. 6:37

    be a really high high uh lever uh

  205. Architecture patterns

    ARIA flags RoPE and SwiGLU as a promising recipe. SwiGLU runs have a median val/loss of 4.503 across 8 runs, versus 5.505 across 123 GELU runs; RoPE runs have a median of 4.478.

    Text in image
    Across runs with val/loss, the best batch_size=128 run is 4.391 and median is 4.681; batch_size=64 best is 4.591 / median 4.969; batch_size=16 median is much worse at 5.854. This is confounded with later experiment waves, but it is a strong signal.
    
    4. Rope + SwiGLU appears repeatedly in the winning recipe.
    activation=swiglu has best 4.391 / median 4.503 across 8 runs, while gelu has best 4.697 / median 5.505 across 123 runs. pos_type=rope similarly has best 4.391 / median 4.478. This looks like a high-value architecture hook.
    
    5. The science-plan phase already identified the recipe before the frontier phase amplified it.
    
    Interface text:
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs 248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITER
    Hypothesis: Very sli...
    Hypothesis: Width7...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    ARIA
    New chat
    Hey - what can you do?
    4. AR - Workspace Builder
    can you please summarize the last ...
    AR - Quickstart Empty
    AR - Minimal
    autoresearch-demo-01
    3. AR - Summary Report
    AR - Outlier Plot
    2. AR - Find patterns
    /autoresearch-quickstart
    Ask ARIA

    6:39Demo milestone

  206. 6:40

    parameter. It identified an

  207. 6:42

    architectural recipe that seemed to be

  208. 6:44

    quite promising and a number of other

  209. 6:46

    insights that would have taken me hours

  210. 6:48

    or days to discover on my own. And Arya

  211. 6:50

    is able to do it right for me directly

  212. 6:52

    in the interface that I already live.

  213. ARIA report evidence

    Sweeney asks ARIA to create a Weights & Biases report. The response lists loss curves, comparison charts, scatter plots, and a panel for training and validation curves and likely next ablations.

    Text in image
    Visual evidence included in the report:
    • Validation-loss curves for the top runs.
    • Final validation-loss and best-bpb bar charts.
    • Science-plan architecture comparison charts.
    • Scatter plots for model size, batch size, and steps versus validation loss.
    • A frontier-focused panel section showing training/validation curves and the likely next ablations.
    
    Interface text:
    Chrome  File  Edit  View  History  Bookmarks  Profiles  Tab  Window  Help
    Wed Jul 1 13:36:50
    wandb.ai/aria-autoresearch-01/wandb_agent_default_project/workspace?nw=nwusertsweeney
    D: ARIA  AIEng  D: Weave - Prod Logs  Metrics  To Review  My Stuff  Monitoring  My Work  Preso  Administration  Dev Tools  Products
    aria-autoresearch-01 > Projects > wandb_agent_default_pr... > Workspace
    Tim Sweeney
    wandb
    Tsweeney's workspace
    Project
    Workspace
    Runs
    Jobs
    Automat.
    Sweeps
    Reports
    Runs  248
    Search runs
    1 filter
    NAME  NOTES  ITER
    Hypothesis: Very sli...
    Hypothesis: Width7...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width6...
    Hypothesis: Width
    1-24 of [illegible]
    ARIA
    New chat
    Hey - what can you do?
    4. AR - Workspace Builder
    can you please summarize the last ...
    AR - Quickstart Empty
    AR - Minimal
    autoresearch-demo-01
    3. AR - Summary Report
    AR - Outlier Plot
    2. AR - Find patterns
    /autoresearch-quickstart
    Ask ARIA

    6:54Demo milestone

  214. 6:55

    Not only is it able to emit text based

  215. 6:57

    uh textbased outputs, but it also deeply

  216. 7:00

    integrates with a number of weights and

  217. 7:01

    biases visualization utilities. So here

  218. 7:04

    I've actually asked it to emit a weights

  219. 7:06

    and biases report which for those who

  220. 7:08

    aren't familiar is essentially a

  221. 7:09

    markdown file on steroids. It's got uh

  222. 7:12

    embedded embedded plots, charts and and

  223. 7:14

    and graphics. And so here uh you know

  224. 7:16

    it's talked about the thesis of the

  225. 7:18

    project. It's it's emitted a number of

  226. 7:20

    of data panels. And uh I actually think

  227. 7:23

    it's quite interesting. It used um one

  228. 7:25

    of our more esoteric panels, the uh

  229. 7:27

    parameter importance chart to uh tell me

  230. 7:30

    the correlation of various different

  231. 7:32

    parameters within this uh within this

  232. 7:33

    training job.

  233. 7:35

    Uh in addition to uh reports, it's also

  234. 7:38

    great at working with workspaces. So if

  235. 7:40

    you're a weights and biases user, uh you

  236. 7:43

    spend a lot of your time uh designing

  237. 7:45

    and working with workspaces. Well, Arya

  238. 7:48

    is actually customtuned and prompted to

  239. 7:50

    really understand how to build

  240. 7:51

    workspaces, build plots, and complement

  241. 7:54

    that that data analytics with real live

  242. 7:56

    graphics using the built-in proprietary

  243. 7:58

    charts that weights and biases users

  244. 8:00

    know and love. Um, so with that, let's

  245. 8:03

    go ahead and check back on some of our

  246. 8:04

    our prompts. We can see that the please

  247. 8:06

    summarize this project prompt is cooking

  248. 8:08

    away. It's querying weights and biases.

  249. 8:10

    It's applying patches. It's writing its

  250. 8:12

    own code. So, we'll come back and check

  251. 8:13

    on that in a moment. and our longunning

  252. 8:15

    training job is uh still pulling for the

  253. 8:18

    results. We can see that we're cooking

  254. 8:20

    away on our GPUs. So, we're we're frying

  255. 8:22

    some GPUs [music] and doing some data

  256. 8:24

    science all live. And while that's

  257. 8:26

    cooking, let's go ahead and jump back to

  258. 8:27

    the presentation. We'll come back in a

  259. 8:28

    moment.

  260. 8:30

    Uh

  261. 8:33

    oh, no, we're not looking at a

  262. 8:34

    dictionary. We're looking at a PO.

  263. 8:36

    Great. Uh okay, so quick recap here.

  264. 8:38

    What did Arya show? What did we show in

  265. 8:40

    these last five minutes? First, we show

  266. 8:42

    that uh Arya can serve as your data

  267. 8:44

    science companion right inside of

  268. 8:46

    Weights and Biases, helping you discover

  269. 8:48

    insights that you wouldn't you wouldn't

  270. 8:49

    be able to discover as your experiments

  271. 8:51

    and as your team size grows.

  272. 8:55

    Next, we address the problem of

  273. 8:57

    complicated reporting and complicated

  274. 8:58

    plotting. Weights and biases users are

  275. 9:00

    are really want to turn their insights

  276. 9:02

    into visual communication tools. They

  277. 9:04

    want to communicate with their peers and

  278. 9:06

    their colleagues. So Arya's built from

  279. 9:08

    the ground up to understand those

  280. 9:09

    primitives and help co-pilot and drive

  281. 9:12

    right along right alongside in the UI

  282. 9:15

    and announcing now today for the first

  283. 9:17

    time we are releasing Arya on our iOS

  284. 9:19

    device or on our iOS app. So uh uh Arya

  285. 9:23

    released on Monday and our iOS app now

  286. 9:26

    has Arya built in. So if you're

  287. 9:27

    conducting hyperparameter tuning jobs,

  288. 9:29

    if you're training models, or if you're

  289. 9:31

    just researching within the weights and

  290. 9:32

    biases ecosystem, you can go touched

  291. 9:34

    grass at Yerba Buena uh gardens and

  292. 9:37

    steer your uh hyperparameter tuning jobs

  293. 9:39

    all from your mobile device. And what is

  294. 9:41

    this all building up to? This is

  295. 9:43

    building up to an a fully automated

  296. 9:45

    endto-end research platform where we're

  297. 9:47

    not seeking to replace uh RL

  298. 9:49

    researchers, but complement your

  299. 9:50

    workflows. Arya's great at orchestrating

  300. 9:53

    jobs, understanding GPU workloads,

  301. 9:55

    responding to events within the within

  302. 9:57

    the Wandi ecosystem, and listening to

  303. 9:59

    researchers, uh, uh, looking up archive

  304. 10:01

    papers, and collaborating on hypothesis.

  305. 10:04

    So, we can let Arya drive the mechanics

  306. 10:05

    that you don't want to deal with while

  307. 10:07

    you focus on the new ideas, new

  308. 10:08

    architectures, and new parameters that

  309. 10:10

    you wanted to try.

  310. 10:12

    Um, great. So, that's Arya in a

  311. 10:14

    nutshell. We're really hoping that you

  312. 10:16

    give it a shot. And uh we'll jump back

  313. 10:18

    to the auto research at the end and see

  314. 10:20

    if we got a new best record. But before

  315. 10:22

    we do that, let's talk about how we use

  316. 10:24

    weights and biases and coreweave to

  317. 10:26

    actually build Arya. So now speaking to

  318. 10:28

    a lot of the the AI agent builders in

  319. 10:30

    the room, here's a quick architecture on

  320. 10:32

    the lefth hand side. You see that we

  321. 10:34

    have a web client, iOS client that

  322. 10:36

    communicates with our API server that

  323. 10:37

    then dumps data into our turn database

  324. 10:39

    and is worked on by our harness, our our

  325. 10:41

    worker harness. This is sort of

  326. 10:43

    archetypical of probably what most of

  327. 10:45

    you are all building in the room and is

  328. 10:47

    exactly what we have on our back end.

  329. 10:49

    But that harness worker is a magic is a

  330. 10:51

    is a magic box and it connects to a

  331. 10:53

    number of important utilities. First is

  332. 10:55

    a sandbox where it can execute arbitrary

  333. 10:57

    shell calls uh do do Python data science

  334. 11:00

    etc. And we invite you to try coreweave

  335. 11:02

    weights and biases sandbox to fit into

  336. 11:04

    your architecture.

  337. 11:06

    Next up you need an LLM provider of

  338. 11:08

    course and so if you're maybe using GLM

  339. 11:10

    5.2 two or one of your fine-tuned

  340. 11:12

    models. We invite you to use uh weights

  341. 11:14

    and biases inference and connect that to

  342. 11:16

    your worker as well.

  343. 11:18

    If you're like us, you need to run

  344. 11:20

    longunning workloads outside of the main

  345. 11:22

    loop of the agent where you're actually

  346. 11:24

    training for day for sometimes days at a

  347. 11:26

    time. Weights and biases launch can

  348. 11:28

    actually help facilitate that and

  349. 11:29

    coreweave GPUs can help make that

  350. 11:31

    compute even better.

  351. 11:33

    And then lastly, and really most

  352. 11:35

    importantly, we need an observability

  353. 11:36

    layer. It's critical that your agents

  354. 11:38

    are able to log out their what's going

  355. 11:40

    on with their sessions, their turns,

  356. 11:42

    their tool calls, any errors they're hap

  357. 11:43

    that that's happening, etc. Uh we have a

  358. 11:46

    product called Weights and Biases Weave

  359. 11:48

    that we log 100% of our traces to where

  360. 11:50

    us and our team can learn from. And

  361. 11:52

    that's where we move from production to

  362. 11:54

    offline where our team is able to use

  363. 11:56

    Weights and Biases Weave to drive

  364. 11:58

    insights and identify behaviors,

  365. 12:00

    implement tasks with tasks which are

  366. 12:02

    essentially unit tests for your models

  367. 12:04

    and evaluate those models in a loop.

  368. 12:07

    We have a model repository which you

  369. 12:08

    might choose to use weights and biases

  370. 12:10

    artifacts to store your agents or models

  371. 12:12

    and you we emit our evaluation results

  372. 12:15

    to weave where we have a common

  373. 12:16

    dashboard that we can make go no-go

  374. 12:18

    decisions on various prompt changes or

  375. 12:20

    architectural changes that then feeds

  376. 12:23

    into a research loop which we call our

  377. 12:24

    improvement loop where we form

  378. 12:26

    hypotheses implement candidate agents

  379. 12:28

    and analyze the evals. So we have two

  380. 12:30

    sort of complimentary yet adversarial

  381. 12:32

    research loops going on going on offline

  382. 12:35

    feeding data from weights and biases

  383. 12:37

    weave ultimately to identify the best

  384. 12:39

    model so that we can promote that to

  385. 12:41

    production through our registry and

  386. 12:42

    close the data flywheel. So in the next

  387. 12:45

    just uh three seven minutes or so we'll

  388. 12:47

    just talk about uh weights and biases

  389. 12:49

    weave and show how we as a team actually

  390. 12:51

    use weave to facilitate this workflow

  391. 12:53

    and we believe this is something that

  392. 12:55

    you would benefit from as well all of

  393. 12:56

    you agent builders in the room.

  394. 12:59

    Yes, another demo. Great.

  395. 13:03

    Okay. Okay, we have new responses. So,

  396. 13:05

    it's going to be exciting when we open

  397. 13:06

    this up later. See if uh we've got some

  398. 13:09

    better metrics. Um, okay. Let me zoom

  399. 13:11

    out just a little bit here. So, here I'm

  400. 13:13

    looking at the agent dashboard. This is

  401. 13:15

    the live weights and biases agent or

  402. 13:18

    Arya agent dashboard uh built in weave.

  403. 13:21

    Man, that is a lot of uh branded

  404. 13:23

    buzzwords there. This is the dashboard

  405. 13:25

    that you would get if you use our tool.

  406. 13:26

    and uh you have a you know uh span

  407. 13:29

    volume, conversation volume, token

  408. 13:31

    tracking, etc. Think of this as like a

  409. 13:33

    uh a bird's eye view of your agent. For

  410. 13:36

    me, however, I really like this

  411. 13:38

    conversations view, which I do have

  412. 13:39

    pre-loaded in this tab. This

  413. 13:41

    conversations view is a live feed of all

  414. 13:44

    of the conversations that are going

  415. 13:45

    through Arya, but it's filtered down to

  416. 13:47

    just the internal employees. So, it's a

  417. 13:49

    little bit of a of a reduced set here.

  418. 13:51

    Um what I what I love is this middle

  419. 13:53

    spans view which gives me a visual

  420. 13:56

    indicator of the topology of a trace.

  421. 13:58

    Different colors and and shapes indicate

  422. 14:01

    different things that are happening

  423. 14:02

    within the agent. So things like tool

  424. 14:04

    calls, LLM calls, thinking blocks, etc.

  425. 14:06

    which really help me understand again

  426. 14:08

    the shape and topology of that

  427. 14:10

    particular conversation. I can of course

  428. 14:12

    open up one of these conversations and

  429. 14:14

    view our our conversation view where I

  430. 14:17

    can see the system prompt, the user

  431. 14:18

    message, shell calls, reasoning blocks,

  432. 14:21

    etc. This is where my research lead,

  433. 14:23

    myself and my PM go to add notes, add

  434. 14:26

    feedback, add emojis, and talk about and

  435. 14:28

    discover those insights and those

  436. 14:30

    behavioral nuances we spoke about

  437. 14:32

    earlier so that we can turn them into

  438. 14:33

    tasks.

  439. 14:35

    Arya's built in to the weights and

  440. 14:37

    biases system as well. Here you'll see a

  441. 14:39

    summarize button and these are sprinkled

  442. 14:40

    throughout the weights and biases

  443. 14:42

    application. I simply click summarize

  444. 14:44

    and we start a new chat contextualized

  445. 14:47

    to the thing that I'm looking at. So it

  446. 14:49

    it sees this and says give me a brief

  447. 14:51

    summary of this particular conversation.

  448. 14:53

    So if you if you're paying a attention

  449. 14:55

    closely, you'll realize that what we're

  450. 14:57

    doing is using Arya to analyze Arya's

  451. 15:00

    own conversations to then make

  452. 15:01

    recommendations about how to improve

  453. 15:02

    Arya all within the UI.

  454. 15:06

    Um okay, great. While that's cooking

  455. 15:08

    away, I want to show you the last item

  456. 15:10

    uh within the Weave ecosystem here, and

  457. 15:12

    that's signals. We've heard a lot today

  458. 15:14

    about the value of evals and the value

  459. 15:16

    of LLM judges. Weave actually offers an

  460. 15:18

    integrated LLM judge experience. So

  461. 15:21

    here, if I zoom out a little bit, you'll

  462. 15:23

    see that I have a user frustration

  463. 15:25

    signal, a lowquality response signal,

  464. 15:27

    ask user signal, etc. These are LLM

  465. 15:29

    judges that run live against against our

  466. 15:32

    live traffic. And we can see various

  467. 15:34

    different signals like user frustration

  468. 15:35

    moments or lowquality responses. These

  469. 15:38

    help our team identify these clusters of

  470. 15:40

    behavior for us to go fix in next week's

  471. 15:42

    iteration. Let's go ahead and do a live

  472. 15:44

    look and see what it says. Um this says

  473. 15:47

    the user explicitly states that I'm not

  474. 15:49

    satisfied with the loss curve. It looks

  475. 15:51

    bad and it apparently that indicates

  476. 15:53

    frustration. So here we can see an LLM

  477. 15:56

    judges live reasoning for why that

  478. 15:58

    particular flag was uh indicated.

  479. 16:02

    Uh let's see, four minutes left.

  480. 16:03

    Perfect. Um so, uh with that, I've been

  481. 16:06

    using the term task a lot. And so what

  482. 16:08

    we're do, what I've showed so far is is

  483. 16:10

    this live production loop where we are

  484. 16:12

    are are are tracing our our prod logs.

  485. 16:14

    We're looking at them as humans, maybe

  486. 16:16

    even using LLMs to complement that

  487. 16:17

    analysis. And what we end up doing is

  488. 16:20

    transforming those into tasks. Now, this

  489. 16:22

    gets a bit technical here, but our tasks

  490. 16:24

    are all described as YAML files. You can

  491. 16:26

    think of a task as essentially a unit

  492. 16:28

    test for your model. So here we say we

  493. 16:30

    have a an example user prompt that says

  494. 16:33

    check this run and that run. Both of

  495. 16:35

    these are giving good results. What can

  496. 16:37

    we learn from this? What's the

  497. 16:38

    difference? So this is an example of

  498. 16:40

    something we want Arya to be good at for

  499. 16:42

    all of you. And after the uh requisite

  500. 16:45

    metadata we see that we've defined an

  501. 16:47

    LLM judge. So here we've defined what

  502. 16:50

    correctness means in the context of that

  503. 16:52

    question.

  504. 16:53

    And we've then we've defined a second

  505. 16:55

    LLM judge that determines if the

  506. 16:58

    insights are actually interesting.

  507. 17:00

    [laughter] And then we've uh defined a

  508. 17:02

    third rule-based judge that says were

  509. 17:05

    you able to actually generate a result

  510. 17:07

    within just six tool calls meaning it

  511. 17:09

    got there with some degree of

  512. 17:10

    expediency. These are all then clustered

  513. 17:13

    together into we have about like 200 of

  514. 17:15

    these. They're all clustered together

  515. 17:17

    into an eval suite that runs nightly.

  516. 17:19

    And again we use weave to track all

  517. 17:21

    those evals. So here, I know it's a bit

  518. 17:23

    small on this screen, but what you're

  519. 17:25

    looking at is a listing of every night's

  520. 17:27

    eval. This is literally two nights ago,

  521. 17:29

    the evaluation for our candidate model

  522. 17:31

    got 73% on our production or on our eval

  523. 17:34

    suite against the 72% that our prod

  524. 17:37

    model got, which means we're definitely

  525. 17:38

    going to push that forward uh this

  526. 17:40

    Friday. Uh and we can see a kind of a a

  527. 17:42

    performance plot on the right. So these

  528. 17:44

    utilities are what you would get out of

  529. 17:45

    the box if you're uh if you decide to

  530. 17:47

    pick up weave and use this tool. Um,

  531. 17:50

    jumping back to the last conversation we

  532. 17:52

    had where it asked me where we asked,

  533. 17:54

    uh, can you please give a quick summary

  534. 17:56

    of this trace, we see that it actually

  535. 17:58

    analyzed the conversation, understood

  536. 18:00

    what the user was doing, and then

  537. 18:02

    ultimately decided that this was a

  538. 18:04

    pretty strong trace. Um, let's see,

  539. 18:07

    we've got two and a half minutes left,

  540. 18:08

    so let's just quickly recap here. Uh,

  541. 18:11

    first off, uh, what we use weave to do

  542. 18:13

    is a, collect production traffic. Super

  543. 18:15

    critical to collect all of your

  544. 18:16

    production traffic so you can learn and

  545. 18:17

    iterate. Secondly, we use it to generate

  546. 18:20

    insights both as humans as well. We we

  547. 18:22

    do it as humans. We use Arya and we use

  548. 18:24

    LLM judges to identify those behavioral

  549. 18:26

    nuances. We then enrich our tasks. We

  550. 18:30

    implement models and we evaluate using

  551. 18:32

    weights and biases weave as a shared

  552. 18:34

    dashboard where we can make decisions

  553. 18:35

    together as a team that then ultimately

  554. 18:38

    allows us to promote the best model

  555. 18:40

    forward with confidence.

  556. 18:43

    So speaking of confident

  557. 18:44

    productionization, let me speak uh

  558. 18:46

    briefly to the managers in the room. So

  559. 18:48

    a few tips for being successful here.

  560. 18:51

    First is um invest in agent-oriented

  561. 18:53

    observability. Uh I'm a bit biased. I

  562. 18:56

    believe that weights and biases weave is

  563. 18:57

    the uh observability platform of the

  564. 18:59

    future. Uh but pick your favorite

  565. 19:01

    flavor. Whatever it is, log your

  566. 19:03

    sessions, log your turns, log your tools

  567. 19:04

    and feedback. This introduces an ability

  568. 19:07

    to catch a new class of bugs in our

  569. 19:08

    world called behavioral bugs. Not

  570. 19:10

    exceptions, not performance, but

  571. 19:12

    behavioral bugs.

  572. 19:14

    Next up, tasks and evals are the new

  573. 19:16

    world of CI. You've heard a lot about

  574. 19:18

    this. If you are a software engineer,

  575. 19:19

    you've written unit tests your whole

  576. 19:21

    life. You must develop a practice where

  577. 19:23

    your researchers are sitting on the same

  578. 19:24

    scrum team as you developing tasks and

  579. 19:26

    you're viewing the performance metrics

  580. 19:28

    as true go no-go decisions. But in order

  581. 19:31

    to complement that, you must use humans

  582. 19:33

    as a necessary judge. There are

  583. 19:35

    behavioral nuances that LLM will not

  584. 19:37

    catch. You must be using your product

  585. 19:39

    and you must be manually reviewing these

  586. 19:41

    traces as a team at the end of the week

  587. 19:43

    on a board looking at the best and worst

  588. 19:45

    traces to understand how your model is

  589. 19:47

    performing.

  590. 19:49

    And then lastly, um just maybe one one

  591. 19:51

    more tip is to add value through context

  592. 19:53

    and tools. It can be really tempting to

  593. 19:56

    uh try to overengineer the harness and

  594. 19:58

    do a bunch of creative stuff around

  595. 19:59

    memory and things like this. We found

  596. 20:01

    that a a lot of lowhanging fruit can be

  597. 20:03

    ascertained through simply giving your

  598. 20:04

    agent context about your business

  599. 20:06

    domain, the underlying uh primitives

  600. 20:08

    that you have available and your

  601. 20:09

    particular uh business data. Um so with

  602. 20:12

    that, let's go ahead and check in on our

  603. 20:15

    uh our our research agent here and let's

  604. 20:19

    go ahead and toggle our workspace. And

  605. 20:21

    what we should be seeing is yes indeed a

  606. 20:24

    little dot that uh oh okay our previous

  607. 20:27

    dot which was done at lunch was 5.83.

  608. 20:30

    831. This got 5.833. So we were right on

  609. 20:33

    the edge of having a live improvement,

  610. 20:35

    but pretty darn close. Uh so that's what

  611. 20:37

    the uh that's what the model was able to

  612. 20:39

    produce. It actually uh ran uh quite a

  613. 20:42

    few tests here. I see I'm over time, so

  614. 20:44

    I will click close pretty soon. But we

  615. 20:46

    ran 12 different experiments within that

  616. 20:48

    experiment batch and uh we'll be running

  617. 20:50

    more all night. So please try out Arya,

  618. 20:52

    scan the QR codes, check out the docs.

  619. 20:54

    Uh we really love to see what you do

  620. 20:56

    with it and um looking forward to

  621. 20:57

    serving you. Thank you very much.

  622. 21:13

    >> [music]