[ericpauley]

It should be noted that MaxSAT 2024 did not include z3, as with many competitions. It’s possible (I’d argue likely) that the agent picked up on techniques from Z3 or some other non-competing solver, rather than actually discovering some novel approach.

[throw-qqqqq]

Z3 is capable (it’s an SMT solver, not just SAT), but it’s not very fast at boolean satifiability and not at all competitive with modern SOTA SAT solvers. Try comparing it to Chaff or Glucose e.g.

[jmalicki]

Or for that matter even from later versions of the same solvers that were in its training data!

[ericpauley]

True. I’d be curious whether a combination of matching comp/training cutoff and censoring web searches could yield a more precise evaluation.

[chaisan]

as its from 2024 (MaxSAT was not held in 2025), its quite likely all the solvers are in the training data. so the interesting part here is the instances for which we actually got better costs that what is currently known (in the best-cost.csv) file.

[ericpauley]

As GP noted the issue is that even better versions than competed in MaxSAT are likely in the training data or web resources.

[dooglius]

Is z3 competitive in SAT competitions? My impression was that it is popular due to the theories, the python API, and the level of support from MSR.

[ericpauley]

Funnily, this was precisely the question I had after posting this (and the topic of an LLM disagreement discussed in another thread). Turns out not, but sibling comment is another confounding factor.