mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Nano World Models: A Minimalist Implementation of Future Video Prediction

arXiv 2605.23993 ↗First posted 17 May 2026cs.CV cs.AI cs.LGcited by 4

On the map: World models → Video-generation world models and simulators

Abstract (arXiv)

World models have become a central paradigm for learning predictive simulators that support generation, planning, and decision-making. Yet, despite rapid progress in industry-scale interactive video generation, the broader research community still lacks compact, reproducible, and easily extensible implementations for studying the design choices underlying modern world models. We introduce Nano World Models, a minimalist codebase for future video prediction centered around diffusion forcing. Nano World Models provides a unified interface for generative objectives, model scales, action-conditioning mechanisms, latent observation spaces, datasets, evaluation protocols, and long-horizon rollout procedures. This design enables controlled studies of world-modeling components that are often entangled across separate implementations. Through experiments across simple control environments, game simulation, and real-robot data, we examine how prediction parameterization, architecture scale, action injection, sampling budget, and domain complexity affect video prediction quality and autoregressive rollout behavior. By releasing code, configurations, evaluation scripts, and pretrained checkpoints, Nano World Models aims to provide a compact yet extensible experimental substrate for open, reproducible, and scientific world-model research.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Video-generation world models and simulators, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 56 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 May 2026.

Builds on

56 of 63 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Solaris: Building a Multiplayer Video World Model in Minecraft25 Feb
  2. 2026Advancing Open-source World Models28 Jan
  3. 2025Cambrian-S: Towards Spatial Supersensing in Video6 Nov
  4. 2025Vid2World: Crafting Video Diffusion Models to Interactive World Models20 May
  5. 2024Genie: Generative Interactive Environments23 Feb
  6. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets25 Nov
  7. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers19 Dec
  8. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modeling6 Oct

Other references · 48

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  2. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  3. 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,893
  4. 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,286
  5. 2022Video Diffusion Modelscited by 2,280
  6. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,007
  7. 2017Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalizationcited by 1,998
  8. 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,778
  9. 2022Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Modelscited by 1,765
  10. 2020D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,406
  11. 2018Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challengescited by 1,204
  12. 2022Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applicationscited by 1,107
36 more
  1. 2018DeepMind Control Suitecited by 935
  2. 2018Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolutioncited by 761
  3. 2024SiT: Exploring Flow and Diffusion-based Generative Models with Scalable Interpolant Transformerscited by 707
  4. 2016TensorFlow: Large-Scale Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systemscited by 660
  5. 2024Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusioncited by 634
  6. 2025Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Viewscited by 626
  7. 2025Self Forcing: Bridging the Train-Test Gap in Autoregressive Video Diffusioncited by 569
  8. 2024Latte: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Video Generationcited by 536
  9. 2024Revisiting Feature Prediction for Learning Visual Representations from Videocited by 490
  10. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 357
  11. 2023Common Diffusion Noise Schedules and Sample Steps are Flawedcited by 308
  12. 2024Flow Matching Guide and Codecited by 291
  13. 2024Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Ataricited by 285
  14. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 262
  15. 2025LongLive: Real-time Interactive Long Video Generationcited by 237
  16. 2026LeWorldModel: Stable End-to-End Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture from Pixelscited by 237
  17. 2025LeJEPA: Provable and Scalable Self-Supervised Learning Without the Heuristicscited by 227
  18. 2025Ctrl-World: A Controllable Generative World Model for Robot Manipulationcited by 149
  19. 2025Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Modelscited by 122
  20. 2024Evaluating the World Model Implicit in a Generative Modelcited by 107
  21. 2026V-JEPA 2.1: Unlocking Dense Features in Video Self-Supervised Learningcited by 104
  22. 2025TesserAct: Learning 4D Embodied World Modelscited by 90
  23. 2026PointWorld: Scaling 3D World Models for In-The-Wild Robotic Manipulationcited by 74
  24. 2025WoW: Towards a World omniscient World model Through Embodied Interactioncited by 66
  25. 2025Scaling Language-Free Visual Representation Learningcited by 62
  26. 2025WorldGym: World Model as An Environment for Policy Evaluationcited by 61
  27. 2025VAGEN: Reinforcing World Model Reasoning for Multi-Turn VLM Agentscited by 60
  28. 2023StreamDiffusion: A Pipeline-level Solution for Real-time Interactive Generationcited by 56
  29. 2023Introduction to Latent Variable Energy-Based Models: A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligencecited by 52
  30. 2021Counter-Strike Deathmatch with Large-Scale Behavioural Cloningcited by 49
  31. 2025World-in-World: World Models in a Closed-Loop Worldcited by 44
  32. 2026Lyra 2.0: Explorable Generative 3D Worldscited by 36
  33. 2026LingBot-Map: Geometric Context Transformer for Streaming 3D Reconstructioncited by 32
  34. 2026Reconstruction or Semantics? What Makes a Latent Space Useful for Robotic World Modelscited by 21
  35. 2025General agents contain world modelscited by 14
  36. 2025Jasmine: A Simple, Performant and Scalable JAX-based World Modeling Codebasecited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026MiniWorld: Democratizing the Training of Video World Models from Scratch
  2. 2026Foresight Without Seeing: Latent Futures for World Action Models
  3. 2026OpenWAM: An Open Framework for Composable World-Action Models
  4. 2024AVID: Adapting Video Diffusion Models to World Models
  5. 2026World Action Models: A Survey
  6. 2026Causal World Modeling for Robot Control
  7. 2026What Makes World Action Models Generalize? An Empirical Study of Test-Time Future Modeling
  8. 2026Video Generation Models as World Models: Efficient Paradigms, Architectures and Algorithms