FrontierCS 2
Agents work inside the released repository of a recent systems or programming-languages paper and try to beat that paper's method. A hidden held-out suite grades the final patch against the human reference.
48 of a planned 150 tasks released across 13 domains. The maker says FrontierCS 2 asks a different question from FrontierCS 1.0, so scores are not comparable.
- Released
- October 2026
- Kind
- AI research tasks
- Level
- Research frontier
- Scored
- Checked automatically
- Answers
- Agent task
- Tasks
- Public, plus a private test set
- Strongest model tested
-
Gemini 4 Carbon #2 on the capability index
- Last model added
- November 2026
- Scores refreshed
- November 12th, 2026
In the authors’ words
Can LLM agents make contributions to frontier computer science R&D? We introduce FrontierCS 2, a benchmark of 48 open-ended tasks. We take a paper and the code its authors released and delete the paper's contribution. The deleted code becomes the human reference that sets the bar. Earlier open-ended benchmarks give each agent a problem statement and grade one program after the run. FrontierCS 2 places the agent inside a research environment. The agent inherits a working repository and may submit a patch at any point. For each patch, a judge returns a development-suite score but keeps the evaluator, the held-out final suite and the reference private, and grades the final submission on that suite against the reference. The tasks span 13 domains, from machine-learning systems and high-performance computing to databases, security and robotics. Beyond these 48 tasks, FrontierCS 2 keeps a private set of more than 100 tasks, to be announced in the future. We evaluate 12 agents. The best one is Claude Opus 5.5, passing 58% of its runs. No run passes on 16 tasks. A higher score is not the same as a pass: most runs that beat the reference on the combined final score still fall short on some metric or workload. On a shared capability scale for agents and tasks, the median task is roughly as difficult as what the strongest agent can handle.
Claude Opus 5.5 leads with 58.3%
Best score per model from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on November 12th, 2026. Where a model ran with several settings or harnesses, we keep its best.
- 58.3 Claude Opus 5.5
- 54.2
Gemini 4 Argon
- 54.2
Gemini 4 Carbon
- 50.0 Claude Sonnet 5.5
- 45.8 GPT-6 Astra
- 39.6 GPT-6.1 Terra
- 37.5 GPT-6.1 Sol
- 35.4 Claude Fable 5.1
- 22.9 GLM-5.3
- 22.9
Muse Wonder
- 20.8 Kimi K3
- 14.6
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
- 12.5 GLM-5.3-Flash
- 12.5
Muse Spark 1.3
- 12.5
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- 10.4
Qwen 3.8 Max
- 10.4
Step 5 Preview
- 8.33
MiniMax-M3.1-Flash
- 8.33
Inkling 2 Small
- 1 Claude Opus 5.5 58.3%
- 2
Gemini 4 Argon 54.2%
- 3
Gemini 4 Carbon 54.2%
- 4 Claude Sonnet 5.5 50%
- 5 GPT-6 Astra 45.8%
- 6 GPT-6.1 Terra 39.6%
- 7 GPT-6.1 Sol 37.5%
- 8 Claude Fable 5.1 35.4%
- 9 GLM-5.3 22.9%
- 10
Muse Wonder 22.9%
- 11 Kimi K3 20.8%
- 12
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 14.6%
- 13 GLM-5.3-Flash 12.5%
- 14
Muse Spark 1.3 12.5%
- 15
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 12.5%
- 16
Qwen 3.8 Max 10.4%
- 17
Step 5 Preview 10.4%
- 18
MiniMax-M3.1-Flash 8.33%
- 19
Inkling 2 Small 8.33%
Source: Official FrontierCS 2 leaderboard
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Claude Opus 5.5 | 58.3% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 2 | | 54.2% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 3 | | 54.2% | Oct 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 4 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 50% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 5 | GPT-6 Astra | 45.8% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 6 | GPT-6.1 Terra | 39.6% | Oct 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 7 | GPT-6.1 Sol | 37.5% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | Claude Fable 5.1 | 35.4% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 9 | GLM-5.3 | 22.9% | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | | 22.9% | Oct 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 11 | Kimi K3 | 20.8% | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 12 | | 14.6% | Oct 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 13 | GLM-5.3-Flash | 12.5% | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 14 | | 12.5% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 15 | | 12.5% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 16 | | 10.4% | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 17 | | 10.4% | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 18 | | 8.33% | Oct 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 19 | | 8.33% | Nov 2026 | Official leaderboard |
Number one over time
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.
Source: Official FrontierCS 2 leaderboard
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
Source: Official FrontierCS 2 leaderboard
No lab model card reports it yet
We read the headline results of 522 launch posts from 52 labs, and none of them list this benchmark.
Versions
More in AI research
- PaperBench In use Agent replicates ICML 2024 papers from scratch. LLM judge grades against author-written hierarchical rubrics.
Qwen 3.8 Max 93%
- MLS-Bench In use Agent must invent one algorithmic change in an ML research scaffold whose gain transfers across settings. Scored relative to human baselines. Claude Fable 5.1 50.3%
- PostTrainBench 1.2 In use CLI agent gets a base model, one H100 and a time budget to post-train it for a target benchmark. Scored on normalized gain. Claude Fable 5.1 44.6%
- MLE-bench In use Kaggle-style ML engineering competitions. Agent trains models and is scored against competition leaderboards. GPT-6 Astra 93.8%
- KernelBench In use Replace PyTorch operators with faster custom GPU kernels. Scored on correctness and speedup.
MiniMax-M3 28.8%
- PMPP-Hard In use Agents write GPU kernels for 69 tasks that must be correct, and on 48 of them also run within 1.25 times the reference time. The score is the area under the solved-tasks curve over a 10-hour budget, out of 690 task-hours.
Inkling 2 Small 494.3