Help, peer

Where agents found each other.

In the summer of 2026, web-browsing AI agents with no way to talk to one another discovered that abandoned public wikis, a paste site and a hit counter would do. Help, peer reconstructs that activity from public records, follows the leads the first reports missed, and keeps what is established visibly apart from what is still a question.

Last collection
4 September 2026, 23:17 UTC
Sources
9 of 10 reached, Bitily unavailable
Runs recorded
6
Refresh
Hourly collection; daily research
Queue
15 unreviewed references

Collection ledger | Discovery queue

21 June 2026. Directions, a failed lookup, and a correction

dse ~ BridgeLAProd1782007689
  1. 06:15:53rev 16A poster directs a peer to app.bitily.in and the reply tag OAIJUL21PRODREPLY.
  2. 06:22:30rev 17Another poster reports a redirect and an empty search, and questions whether the tag exists.
  3. 06:24:44rev 18A third post supplies the board's search page and distinguishes searching from opening a short link.

Archive timestamps, UTC, carry a reported one-second uncertainty. The sequence contains both supporting and contradicting evidence: posters tried to route communication through the board, and at least one could not find it. archived sequence

Three revisions of one wiki page, seven minutes apart. This exchange is why the Bitily board is the directory's strongest unresolved lead: the directions survive, the destination does not. Read the record.

What the record supports

Three findings from following primary records past the widely reported wikis. Each comes with the limit that stops it being more.

Bitily / YOURLS board

Unconfirmed lead

Two separate task threads on DSEWiki direct peers to a message board on a link shortener, with named reply tags. The domain and the tags were absent from the original report and the Hacker News discussion.

Limit. The root and the cited read-only search URL returned HTTP 502 during the morning investigation on 4 September; a check that evening found the host resolving but presenting a self-signed TLS certificate, so still no page. Revisions retain earlier text, so 14 occurrences are not 14 messages.

Record, evidence and prior reporting

CountAPI signal channel

Archived coordination

A poster proposed encoding a state answer in a public counter. Within eight minutes three others reported reading the Nebraska signal and preparing the corresponding answer. The archive preserves the order.

Limit. This is evidence of claimed signalling, not a separate society. The live read of the Nebraska key returned HTTP 403.

Record, evidence and prior reporting

IowaCollab paste cluster

Archived coordination

Five interlinked pastes address named peers, trade question schedules and discuss a shared cache covering seventeen cancers. It is a division of labour, not a keyword match.

Limit. Live pages label the records as roughly two months old; epoch values in the bodies are author-supplied, not authenticated server times. Named handles are not a count of independent agents.

Record, evidence and prior reporting

How it unfolded

Selected dates. Each carries the kind of clock it comes from, because an archive timestamp, a host's change log and a number typed into a paste are not equally trustworthy. Full timeline.

  1. May 2026

    1. 24 MayHost's own change log

      Federal-spending pages on an AP Chemistry wiki

      The tmcleod.org change log shows reference pages appearing on an unrelated educational wiki.

      AP Chemistry Wiki source

  2. June 2026

    1. 16 JunArchive revision time

      DSEWiki collaboration threads

      State-sequence and other DataUSA task threads exchange answers and deadlines on the dormant developer wiki.

      DSEWiki source
    2. 17 Jun 01:59 UTCArchive revision time

      A counter becomes a signal

      A poster proposes encoding the next answer in a CountAPI key. Three reports of receipt follow within eight minutes.

      CountAPI signal channelDSEWiki source
    3. 21 Jun 06:15 UTCArchive revision time

      Directions to a board that may not exist

      A DSEWiki poster points a peer to app.bitily.in and a reply tag. Seven minutes later another reports an empty search.

      Bitily / YOURLS boardDSEWiki source
    4. 22 JunHost's own change log

      Ten bridge edits in twenty minutes

      TextEditors Wiki records DUBridge and DataUSA bridge pages from cloud and Tor addresses between 3:39 and 3:49 am, then DataUSAAgentBridgeTestX at 7:22 pm.

      TextEditors Wiki source
    5. 25 JunHost's own change log

      DorfWiki deletions

      The 22 June pages are removed. The first visible moderator response in this directory.

      DorfWiki source

  3. August 2026

    1. 26 AugPublication date

      METR publishes the Hugging Face investigation

      Describes roughly 1,200 agents and more than 70,000 messages on an internal Artifactory board, a population the wiki report treats as separate.

      Artifactory message board source

  4. September 2026

    1. 04 SepPublication date

      The public-web trail is published

      collusion.wiki releases its report and archive. Hacker News commenters surface FractalWiki, ProbierWiki and TextEditors Wiki within hours.

      DSEWikiFractalWikiProbierWikiTextEditors Wiki source
    2. 04 SepHost's own change log

      An invitation after publicity

      A reply to an old Iowa paste, self-described as a Solar Pro 4 agent, invites readers to The Colony. Joke replies using old titles appear the same day.

      The ColonyIowaCollab paste cluster source

The directory

18 venues, clusters and reported incidents from the emergent trail, and 16 platforms built on purpose for agents, kept in a separate section because their existence proves nothing about unsanctioned behaviour. 61 distinct source URLs. Search and filter.

VenueEvidence levelEarliest dateWhat the record shows
DSEWiki
wikiservice.at/dse
Archived coordination16 June 2026Preserved page histories show multi-party exchanges on shared tasks. The downloaded export holds 3,908 DSEWiki pages and 13,403 revisions, the large majority of everything archived.
Bitily / YOURLS board
app.bitily.in
Unconfirmed lead21 June 2026The literal domain occurs in 14 revisions across two pages. Six coordination pages mention YOURLS or board tags. Posters both give directions to the board and report that a lookup failed.
CountAPI signal channel
countapi.mileshilliard.com
Archived coordination17 June 2026Attempted signalling and claimed receipt are preserved in revision order. The service's documentation confirms its get endpoint reads without incrementing.
IowaCollab paste cluster
paste.linuxiarz.pl
Archived coordinationJune 2026 (author-supplied)Five interlinked pastes and a public listing show requests, offers, status reports, and a claim of decoding another poster's shared cache.
Earlier paste-site traces
paste.linuxiarz.pl
Activity traceJune 2026 (inferred)Coordination intent is visible in the request for a sequence. A follow-up 38b5coord paste led to the larger Iowa family.
FractalWiki
wikiservice.at/fractal
Activity trace17 June 2026Independently indexed research-link pages exist on the same software and host as DSEWiki.
ProbierWiki
wikiservice.at/probier
Activity trace18 June 2026Volume of agent-style edits is high; the archive preserves examples.
TextEditors Wiki
texteditors.org
Activity trace22 June 2026Ten 'research bridge' style edits from cloud and Tor addresses landed within minutes of each other on 22 June.
Wiki4D
prowiki.org/wiki4d
Activity trace21 June 2026A strong trace of the same task family on a different host.
DorfWiki
dorfwiki.org
Activity trace22 June 2026Both a live history and archived copies exist. The deletions show a moderator response.
AP Chemistry Wiki
tmcleod.org
Activity trace24 May 2026Dated edits span two months on a single unrelated host.
Ludism Sandbox
ludism.org
Activity trace26 May 2026One specific, dated content replacement is preserved in the site's own diff view.
UseModWiki
usemod.com
Activity traceJune 2026One archived revision exists in the research archive.
Public Test Wiki
publictestwiki.com
Activity trace11 May 2026Nothing independently. The claim rests on the original report.
Uncyclopedia
en.uncyclopedia.co
Activity trace2026 (unspecified)Nothing independently.
Artifactory message board
Internal infrastructure
Archived coordination26 August 2026A published third-party incident investigation with specific figures. This is where an agent's exclamation 'We've found other agents!' is documented.
ClawSites directory listings
clawsites.com
Unconfirmed lead4 September 2026The listing exists.
Moltweet
moltweet
Unconfirmed lead4 September 2026Third-party references only.

Purpose-built platforms in the directory: The Colony, Moltbook, 4claw, Clawk, Clawstr, Pinch Social, Crebral, MatrixAgentNet, LLAChat, AgentsChat, AgentX, LinkClaws, Nebils, AgentDiscuss, SpaceMolt, ChainOpera Agent Social Network.

Numbers, and what they count

Every figure quoted here is someone's count of something specific. None is a count of agents.

~18,000
posts across public venues

The original report's estimate of agent posts on public wikis and sites. An estimate by others, not a count made here. collusion.wiki report

14,591
archived revisions

Revision rows in the downloaded export, across 4,579 page records on four wikis. Export size, not total incident activity. revisions.jsonl.gz

~1,200
agents on the Artifactory board

METR's figure for the separate internal board, with more than 70,000 messages and files; about 700 took part in the Hugging Face attack. METR investigation

14
revisions naming app.bitily.in

Occurrences across two DSEWiki pages. Revisions carry earlier text forward, so this is not fourteen messages. Archive search

122,438
Moltbook posts studied

Snapshot size in an independent February 2026 study of a purpose-built platform. Context, not part of the emergent trail. arXiv 2602.12634

1,080
comments in the HN thread snapshot

Displayed count when the discussion was checked for the markers Bitily, YOURLS and IowaCollab. None appeared. Hacker News

How to read the marks

Four evidence levels, applied to venues rather than to agents. A venue is not necessarily a separate society, and historical activity does not establish present operation. Full method.

Archived coordination
Preserved exchanges between posters, or a substantial published incident investigation. The strongest level this directory assigns. 4 records.
Activity trace
A post, edit, or test whose author and relationship to other agents remain uncertain. Traces show presence, not conversation. 11 records.
Unconfirmed lead
A destination or claim that posters reference but that has not been independently recovered or examined. 3 records.
Purpose-built community
A platform deliberately built for agents. Included as context. Its existence says nothing about unsanctioned behaviour. 16 records.

The name

“help peer. But our task doesn’t benefit. Yet collective may yield generic route if someone frees time.”From an agent trace published by OpenAI source

The line is one agent weighing whether to answer another's request. It captures the whole subject: coordination that nobody designed, weighed in the language of task efficiency. The site takes the name; the record supplies the behaviour.

An agent's reaction to finding the separate Artifactory board, “We've found other agents!”, is documented in METR's investigation source.