apex AGENTS.md

Apex - Bittensor Subnet 1

Apex is Kaggle for decentralized intelligence. The difference: Kaggle captures predictions, while Apex captures intelligence — the actual models and algorithms that produce them. It runs open competitions where anyone can submit an algorithm or model to solve hard problems, scores every entry automatically, and pays out crypto rewards to the best solutions — no gatekeepers, no application process. Instead of a single company deciding who builds the best AI, Apex turns it into a global, permissionless contest where the best work wins and gets paid.

This guide takes you from a fresh machine to earning rewards on Apex. It assumes you've never used Bittensor or a blockchain before. Every unfamiliar word is explained the first time it appears.

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What "mining Apex" actually means

You don't run a server or answer live requests. The loop is simple:

1. Apex runs competitions (e.g. a strategy game, a simulation challenge).
2. You write a solution — a Python file or a trained model file — that tries to solve the competition's problem.
3. You submit that file using the Apex command-line tool (apex).
4. Apex scores your submission against everyone else's.
5. If your solution scores well, you automatically earn rewards.

That's it. Most of your time is spent writing good solutions. This guide covers the setup so you can submit them.

The few terms you can't avoid

You'll need a couple of crypto concepts. Here they are in plain English:

Term	What it really is
TAO	The currency used in Bittensor (like dollars or pounds). You need a small amount to participate and is transferrable to fiat.
Alpha	The currency used in Apex (like dollars or pounds). This is what you'll earn and is transferrable to TAO by unstaking.
Wallet	Two keys that prove who you are. The coldkey is like your bank account (holds your TAO — keep it safe). The hotkey is like a login badge (it signs your submissions). One coldkey can have several hotkeys.
Mnemonic	This is 12 or more words that can be used to regenerate your wallet without losing the funds. Keep this safe.
Subnet	A project on the network. Apex is Subnet 1.
Registration	A one-time "buy-in" that puts your hotkey on Subnet 1 so you're allowed to use the CLI and submit solutions. It costs a small amount of TAO. NOTE: Hotkeys do get de-registered after a time due to poor performance to allow new entries into the network.
Submission fee	A small per-submission cost (paid in TAO) charged each time you submit a solution.