mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ScratchWorld: Evaluating If World Models Compute Executable Consequences

arXiv 2606.31689 ↗First posted 30 Jun 2026cs.SEcited by 1

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

World-model evaluations often score a predicted future by overlap with a target state or observation. In sparse-change worlds, this can turn copied persistent state into apparent accuracy. We introduce ScratchWorld, an offline diagnostic benchmark that treats Scratch projects as executable worlds and uses a pinned Scratch VM to produce replay-verified transitions, hidden variables, causal traces, and counterfactual outcomes. ScratchWorld evaluates next-state prediction, long-horizon tracking, causal event attribution, and counterfactual prediction; each replay-verified target can be presented under raw-program, structured-state, natural-language, or rendered input modalities, and our experiments use the structured-state condition. Its primary state metric is value-aware changed-field F1, which gives credit only for the changed field and its executed value. In a 659-example release, seven prompted language/reasoning models reach at most 13.8% value-aware changed-field F1 in a state-only partial-observation stress test. A same-instance copy diagnostic makes the overlap confound concrete: copying the input state reaches 98.0% implied full-state field accuracy and 0.0% changed-field F1, with the largest inflation on real projects. Auxiliary diagnostics separate hidden-state rollout drift, intervention sensitivity, causal attribution, and perturbation robustness. Across these settings, models often react to actions or interventions without following the executable rule that determines the changed value.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 30 Jun 2026.

Builds on

No reference list yet.

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Persistent Computational State: A Session-Centric Runtime for Generative World Models
  2. 2026The GUI Is Not the State: Diagnosing State Aliasing in GUI World Models
  3. 2026HarnessEval-W: Agentifying the Evaluation of Visual Worlds
  4. 2026WorldReasonBench: Human-Aligned Stress Testing of Video Generators as Future World-State Predictors
  5. 2026ActionSplice: In-Flight Action Editing for Interactive World Models
  6. 2026Measuring the Value of World-Model Updates: A Counterfactual Utility Protocol for Continual Adaptation
  7. 2026Debugging code world models
  8. 2026ExeWorldBench: Benchmarking Code-Based Executable 3D World Modeling