Show HN: Herobrine – Minecraft buddies using jev

Minecraft agents that do whatever you ask. Each agent is a real player (Mineflayer) in a vanilla world; TypeSafe's JEV model picks every action it takes, and a planner model (Claude Opus 5.5 or GPT-6 Astra, on the subscription you already have) understands what you say and speaks for it.

Use it two ways:

• As an MCP server inside Claude Code or Codex — "start a world and spawn a bodyguard for me".
• As a CLI —herobrine up --world play ,herobrine spawn --persona "my bodyguard" ,herobrine tell Cedar "bring me 5 logs" .

Both drive the same core; the CLI also works against the MCP instance while Claude Code has it open.

Agents have no fixed roles. Each one has three free-text fields, and the user can change any of them at any time:

With no task, the agent picks its own next short-term task based on its persona and long-term goal. Tasks end as done or stuck.

Each agent gets a short single-word Minecraft-style name (e.g. Flake, Basalt, Cedar) when it spawns. Names are never reused in the same world.

Two models with clearly separated jobs:

• System Two — the planner (src/planner.mjs ): a full language model that turns what people say into atyped task , reviews progress, picks the next task from the persona and long-term goal, and writes every chat reply. It runs through the host you already use, so no extra key is needed:
  • Claude Code → an ACP session (claude-code-acp driving your installedclaude ) withOpus 5.5
  • Codex →codex mcp-server (codex /codex-reply threads) withGPT-6 Astra
  • or an API key (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY ,OPENROUTER_API_KEY ,OPENAI_API_KEY ) One persistent session per agent, so it remembers the conversation.
• System One — JEV (src/jev.mjs ): TypeSafe's choice model. Once a second it picks one concrete action from a menu built from what the agent can see. It never sees free text.

player chat / dashboard / MCP text ──▶ planner ──▶ TaskSpec {kind, items, recipient, location, entity, until} + reply
                                                     │
                 world memory ◀── observe ──▶ action menu ──▶ JEV picks one ──▶ Mineflayer executes (bounded)
                                                     │
                                       predicates verify completion (inventory / delivered / arrived / killed / built)
                                       planner reviews "judged"/"ongoing" tasks, budgets and repeated failures

• Typed tasks (src/tasks.mjs ): completion is verified by the game state, not declared by a model.items (inventory),delivered (hand-over events),arrived (distance),killed ,built ,ongoing (follow/guard),judged (planner reviews it). Item matches are exact ids, globs (*_log ) or categories (food ,tool ,building …) resolved from the game's own registry.
• Prerequisites (src/actions.mjs ): for "make a stone pickaxe" the missing chain (logs → planks → table → sticks → wooden pickaxe → cobblestone) is worked out from Minecraft's recipe data and shown to JEV as the next step.
• World memory (src/memory.mjs ): last-seen player positions, known tables/furnaces/chests/beds/ores, visited areas, home. Every action can target something out of view ("walk to where satuke was last seen", "go back to the furnace").
• Chat:Cedar <anything> ,all <anything> , or a whisper. The planner decides whether it is a task, a goal, a persona change, a stop/resume, or just a question, and answers in character and honestly.

Requirements: Node 20+, a TypeSafe (JEV) key, and a planner: Claude Code (logged in) or Codex (logged in) on the same machine, or an API key. To run worlds locally you also need Java: 21+ for Minecraft 1.20.5 and later, 17 for 1.17–1.20.4.

git clone git@github.com:xatuke/herobrine.git && cd herobrine
npm install
npm link                      # puts `herobrine` on your PATH (optional)
herobrine config set key <TYPESAFE_KEY>    # or: config set key-file /path/to/keyfile
herobrine up --world play --difficulty peaceful   # daemon + world (asks you to accept the Minecraft EULA)
herobrine spawn --world play --persona "a friendly survival companion" --goal "get us iron gear" --owner YourName
herobrine tell Cedar "bring me 5 logs"            # planner interprets it, agent replies
herobrine chat Cedar                              # interactive conversation
herobrine status                                  # everything at a glance
herobrine logs Cedar -f                           # follow task / chat / planner events
herobrine actions Cedar                           # the menu JEV is choosing from right now
herobrine cmd play "time set day"                 # server console
herobrine down                                    # stop agents, worlds and the daemon

herobrine is a thin client of the local HTTP API (http://127.0.0.1:3600, also the dashboard). herobrine up starts a daemon that runs the same core as the MCP server; if Claude Code already has the MCP open, the CLI talks to that instead.

claude mcp add herobrine -e TYPESAFE_API_KEY=your_key -- node /absolute/path/to/herobrine/src/server.mjs
[mcp_servers.herobrine]
command = "node"
args = ["/absolute/path/to/herobrine/src/server.mjs"]
env = { TYPESAFE_API_KEY = "your_key" }
tool_timeout_sec = 300   # first start_server downloads the jar and generates a world

TYPESAFE_KEY_FILE=/path/to/keyfile or herobrine config set key ... work instead of putting the key in the config. The key stays in the server process and is never logged.

• Toward Claude Code / Codex it is an MCP server (that's what you add, and what exposes the tools).
• Inside, it is an ACP client : it spawns Claude Code as an ACP agent to use Opus 5.5 as the planner (with Codex it usescodex mcp-server instead).
• The CLI talks plain HTTP to the same process.

Just talk to Claude or Codex:

Start a peaceful survival world and spawn two agents. One should be my bodyguard; the other should get us iron tools.

Tell Cedar to bring me 10 logs.

Make Flake act like a lazy farmer who complains a lot.

Watching: herobrine status, herobrine logs <agent> -f, or open the dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:3600 (or ask for open_dashboard). It shows each agent's live 3D view, persona, goals, current task and action, next prerequisite, inventory and recent results, plus a box to send it instructions. You can also join the world with Minecraft Java at the same version: Multiplayer → Direct Connect → localhost:25565. Managed servers run in offline mode.

~/.minecraft-jev-mcp/config.json (written by herobrine config set …) can hold typesafeApiKey / typesafeKeyFile, planner and plannerModel; environment variables override it. Agent logs (every JEV decision and result) are written to ~/.minecraft-jev-mcp/logs/<name>.jsonl. Performance and cost numbers: BENCHMARKS.md.

• Offline-mode servers only. Agents join as offline players. Online-mode (Microsoft-authenticated) servers aren't supported.
• Menu-based control. JEV chooses from concrete actions and Mineflayer does the pathfinding. Agents don't see screenshots and don't press individual keys.
• Free-form building is basic. Agents can place blocks around themselves and pillar up, but there's no blueprint builder yet.
• Planner latency. Interpreting an instruction takes ~4–15 s (Opus/Astra); the agent keeps acting on its current task meanwhile. JEV decisions stay sub-second.