Snake Rodeo Skill

Play the Trifle Snake Rodeo automatically with a persistent daemon and modular strategy system. Built on the snake-rodeo-agents library.

How It Works

The game is a multiplayer snake on a grid (hex or cartesian). Teams bid on directions each round — the highest bidder's direction wins. All bids go into a prize pool that the winning team splits. The daemon watches the game via SSE, picks optimal directions using a strategy, and submits votes automatically.

Prerequisites

Authenticated via trifle-auth skill
Node.js 18+
Ball balance (earned from games, auth bonuses, etc.)

Daemon Commands

# Start/stop
node snake.mjs start [--detach] [--strategy NAME]
node snake.mjs stop
node snake.mjs status
node snake.mjs attach [-f]

# Pause/resume voting (daemon keeps running)
node snake.mjs pause
node snake.mjs resume

# Configuration
node snake.mjs config [key] [value]
node snake.mjs strategies
node snake.mjs server [live|staging]
node snake.mjs telegram [chat_id|off]

# Manual play
node snake.mjs state
node snake.mjs vote <direction> <team> [amount]
node snake.mjs strategy    # Analyze current game
node snake.mjs balance

Strategies

Five built-in strategies are available. Each extends BaseStrategy from snake-rodeo-agents.

| Strategy | Alias | Description | |----------|-------|-------------| | expected-value | ev, default | BFS pathfinding, dead-end avoidance, game-theoretic team selection, probabilistic defection in multi-agent scenarios. Balanced. | | aggressive | agg | Backs leading teams, counter-bids aggressively. | | underdog | und | Backs small pools for bigger payouts. | | conservative | con | Minimum bids, prioritizes safety. | | random | rand | Random valid moves. |

Switch strategy:

node snake.mjs config strategy aggressive
# or
node snake.mjs start --strategy aggressive

Creating Custom Strategies

Extend BaseStrategy from snake-rodeo-agents:

import { BaseStrategy } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

export class MyStrategy extends BaseStrategy {
  constructor(options = {}) {
    super('my-strategy', 'My custom strategy', options);
  }

  computeVote(parsed, balance, state) {
    // parsed: ParsedGameState — hex grid, teams, scores, valid directions
    // balance: number — current ball balance
    // state: AgentState — round tracking, team assignment, vote history

    // Return a vote:
    return { direction: 'ne', team: 'A', amount: 1, reason: 'chasing fruit' };

    // Or skip:
    return { skip: true, reason: 'too risky' };
  }

  // Optional: counter-bid when outbid
  shouldCounterBid(parsed, balance, state, ourVote) {
    return null; // or return a new VoteAction
  }
}

Key types for strategy development:

ParsedGameState — Parsed game with head, teams[], validDirections[], gridRadius, prizePool, minBid, fruitsToWin
AgentState — { currentTeam, roundSpend, roundVoteCount, lastRound, gamesPlayed, votesPlaced, wins }
VoteAction — { direction, team, amount, reason }

snake-rodeo-agents Library

The core logic lives in snake-rodeo-agents, a standalone TypeScript library. This skill wraps it with daemon management, config persistence, and OpenClaw integration.

API Client

import { SnakeClient, createAndAuthenticate, parseGameState, getStrategy } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

// Auth (creates a throwaway wallet, no real ETH needed)
const { token, privateKey, address } = await createAndAuthenticate('https://bot.trifle.life');

// Create client
const client = new SnakeClient('https://bot.trifle.life', token);

// Play
const rawState = await client.getGameState();
const parsed = parseGameState(rawState);
const strategy = getStrategy('expected-value');
const vote = strategy.computeVote(parsed, balance, agentState);

if (vote && !vote.skip) {
  await client.submitVote(vote.direction, vote.team, vote.amount);
}

SnakeClient methods:

| Method | Description | |--------|-------------| | getGameState() | Current game state (snake, fruits, scores, votes) | | getBalance() | Current ball balance | | submitVote(dir, team, amount) | Submit a direction vote | | getRodeos() | List active rodeo games | | getUserStatus() | User profile and stats |

Wallet Authentication

SIWE (Sign In With Ethereum) auth with throwaway wallets:

import { createAndAuthenticate, reauthenticate, checkToken } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

// New wallet
const { token, privateKey, address } = await createAndAuthenticate(serverUrl);

// Reuse saved wallet
const { token } = await reauthenticate(serverUrl, savedPrivateKey);

// Check token validity
const user = await checkToken(serverUrl, token);

Game State Utilities

The library provides hex grid utilities for strategy development:

import { parseGameState, hexDistance, bfsDistance, floodFillSize, getValidDirections } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

const parsed = parseGameState(rawState);

// BFS shortest path to a target (respects snake body, grid bounds)
const { distance, firstDir } = bfsDistance(head, target, rawState);

// Flood-fill reachable area (dead-end detection)
const reachable = floodFillSize(head, rawState);

// Hex distance between two positions
const dist = hexDistance(posA, posB);

Tournament Simulator

Run offline tournaments to compare strategies at high speed:

# CLI
npm run simulate -- ev,aggressive --games 100 --seed 42
npm run simulate -- ev,aggressive,conservative --config small --verbose
npm run simulate -- ev,aggressive --json   # machine-readable output

// Library
import { SimAgent, runTournament, RODEO_CYCLES, getStrategy } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

const agents = [
  new SimAgent('a', 'ev-agent', getStrategy('ev')),
  new SimAgent('b', 'agg-agent', getStrategy('aggressive')),
];

const results = runTournament(agents, RODEO_CYCLES, 100, { seed: 42 });
console.log(results.agentStats);
// Same seed = identical results for reproducibility

Simulator options:

| Flag | Description | |------|-------------| | -g, --games N | Games per config (default: 100) | | -c, --config NAME | small\|medium\|large\|all (default: all) | | -s, --seed N | RNG seed for reproducibility | | -v, --verbose | Print per-round details | | --json | Machine-readable JSON output |

Telegram Logging

Send game events to a Telegram group:

import { TelegramLogger } from 'snake-rodeo-agents';

const tg = new TelegramLogger({
  botToken: process.env.TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN,
  chatId: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
});

await tg.send('<b>Hello</b> from the snake agent!');

Configure in the daemon:

node snake.mjs telegram <chat_id>   # enable
node snake.mjs telegram off          # disable

Configuration

Settings are stored in ~/.config/snake-rodeo/settings.json (XDG-compliant, isolated from any host agent).

| Key | Default | Description | |-----|---------|-------------| | strategy | expected-value | Active strategy name | | server | live | live or staging | | minBalance | 5 | Minimum balance to place votes | | telegramChatId | null | Telegram chat ID for logging | | telegramBotToken | null | Telegram bot token (or set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN env var) |

File Locations

| Purpose | Path | |---------|------| | Settings | ~/.config/snake-rodeo/settings.json | | Auth token | ~/.config/snake-rodeo/auth.json or TRIFLE_AUTH_TOKEN env var | | Daemon state | ~/.local/state/snake-rodeo/daemon.state | | Daemon PID | ~/.local/state/snake-rodeo/daemon.pid | | Daemon log | ~/.local/share/snake-rodeo/daemon.log |

Authentication

The skill resolves your Trifle auth token in this order:

TRIFLE_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable (recommended for automation)
~/.config/snake-rodeo/auth.json — { "token": "your-jwt-here" }

To set up auth, run snake auth login (uses trifle-auth skill) or set the env var directly.

Architecture

snake-game/                             # OpenClaw skill wrapper
├── SKILL.md                            # This file
├── snake.mjs                           # CLI entry point
├── clawdhub.json                       # ClawHub registry metadata
├── package.json                        # Dependencies (snake-rodeo-agents)
├── lib/
│   ├── config.mjs                      # Settings/paths
│   ├── api.mjs                         # Token-based API (uses OpenClaw auth)
│   ├── process.mjs                     # Daemon PID management
│   └── telegram.mjs                    # Telegram bridge
├── daemon/
│   └── autoplay.mjs                    # Game loop: SSE → strategy → vote
└── node_modules/
    └── snake-rodeo-agents/             # Core library (TypeScript)
        └── dist/
            ├── lib/game-state.js       # Hex grid, BFS, flood-fill
            ├── lib/strategies/         # Strategy implementations
            ├── lib/client.js           # Standalone API client
            ├── lib/auth.js             # Wallet SIWE auth
            ├── lib/simulator.js        # Offline game simulator
            ├── lib/telegram.js         # Telegram logger
            └── bin/play.js             # Standalone CLI runner

Upgrading

node snake.mjs stop
cd ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/snake-rodeo
npm install github:trifle-labs/snake-rodeo-agents
node snake.mjs start --detach