Jev, TypeSafe AI's decision model, plays Pokémon Red. There are no scripts or cheats: the harness reads the game's memory, lists the legal options with some facts about each, and Jev picks one.

Landing page: jev-pokemon.vercel.app (site/)

Jev beat the game. The live stream ran on YouTube from Sep 25 to Sep 26, 2026 and has ended. The highlights are on the landing page.

You need your own legally obtained copy of Pokémon Red. No ROM is included or distributed here. See Legal.

 Game Boy emulator (Node) ──► read RAM ──► game state (map, party, battle, on-screen text)
          ▲                                          │
          │ button presses                           ▼
   harness mechanics ◄── Jev picks one ◄── legal options + facts
   (A* pathfinding, menus)                (type matchups, damage estimates,
                                           "2 areas toward the objective", ...)

• Jev decides:
  • every menu answer (names, starter, YES/NO, shop, heal, learn/forget moves)
  • what to focus on (progress, heal, train, catch, shop, explore, team)
  • which Pokémon to catch, and which to swap in and out of the team at the PC
  • where to go and who to talk to
  • every battle action (move, switch, item, ball, run)
• The harness never decides:
  • It only reads memory and presses buttons. It never writes to game memory.
  • Game knowledge is limited to the story milestones (what the next goal is and where it happens) in src/knowledge/milestones.ts. Progress is checked against the game's real event flags.
  • Hidden items aren't shown to Jev, since a human wouldn't know where they are.
• House rules:
  • Text speed FAST and battle animations OFF, set once in the Options menu at boot.
  • The player is named JEV and the rival BLUE.
  • Every caught Pokémon gets a nickname: Jev spells it one letter at a time (A–Z or DONE). It has to be a made-up name, not a species name or a nickname already in use.
• Loop protection:
  • Options that were already tried without anything changing get tagged, and Jev is told to try something new.
  • If the same failing choice keeps coming back, the harness samples an alternative.
  • As a last resort, it reloads the latest milestone checkpoint.

Requirements: macOS or Linux, Node 20+, and git.

git clone https://github.com/christianmat/jev-pokemon && cd jev-pokemon
npm install
npm run setup                 # installs rgbds (via brew), clones + builds pret/pokered, generates symbol data
cp /path/to/your/pokered.gb roms/red.gb   # your own dump of Pokémon Red (US/EU)
cp .env.example .env          # then fill it in

The ROM must be the US/EU release. Its SHA-1 is ea9bcae617fdf159b045185467ae58b2e4a48b9a, the same build pret/pokered produces. The harness reads RAM addresses from that disassembly, so other versions won't work.

npm start -- --speed 1                         # real-time; local viewer at http://localhost:8787
npm start -- --speed 1 --resume                # continue from the latest milestone checkpoint
npm start -- --speed 1 --load <save-name>      # load a specific save from saves/
npm run headless -- --steps 3000               # max speed, logs only
npx tsx scripts/tools/save.ts                  # save the running game (writes saves/manual-*.json)

• logs/jev-calls.jsonl has every Jev call: the full state, the options with their facts, the probabilities, and the latency.
• logs/events.jsonl has maps, milestones, saves and errors.

• Price: Jev costs $0.042 per million input tokens, and output is free. A typical call is about 1,200 tokens.
• Rate: at real-time speed the bot makes about 800–1,300 calls an hour. That comes to about $1–1.70 per 24 hours.
• Ceiling: the throttle's worst case, 90 calls a minute nonstop, is about $7 a day.

site/ is plain static HTML with no build step:

1. Create a Vercel project from this repo.
2. Set Root Directory to site.
3. Deploy.

The highlights video (site/highlights.mp4) and links are in site/index.html.

• No ROM included. This repo doesn't contain or link to Pokémon Red, and you need your own legally obtained copy. roms/ is gitignored.
• No Nintendo assets. Game data (symbols, names, maps, font) is read at runtime from your ROM. The symbol file is generated locally from the pret/pokered disassembly during npm run setup, which clones it into vendor/. That disassembly isn't redistributed here, and vendor/ and src/data/generated.json are gitignored.
• Not affiliated. Pokémon is a trademark of Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and GAME FREAK inc. This is a fan experiment, not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Game Freak, The Pokémon Company or TypeSafe AI.
• License. GPL-2.0-or-later (see LICENSE), because it builds on the GPL-licensed serverboy / GameBoy-Online emulator core.

Made by Christian Mathiesen at Frigade.