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Sprint projectSep 13, 2026Chicago, Illinois, USA

GoblinTrap

Jacob Babula · Team CyberGoblins

Submitted to AI Incident Response Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: GoblinTrap

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GoblinTrap separates diversion, tripwire alerts, and containment. Across twelve designed worlds, four defenses were calibrated under common benign-cost and false-alert ceilings, then evaluated on unused seeds and new scripted families. At an illustrative three-call budget, tuned silent bait produced 8.16 harmful actions versus 8.41 with alerts; ideal isolation produced 3.00. Imperfect isolation changed the comparison, and new benign families exposed budget violations.

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How much would this matter for AI safety if it worked? How innovative is it? For scores of 4-5: is this actually new to the field, or replicating recent work?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Negligible. No clear problem addressed, or no meaningful novelty.
  2. 2Limited. Addresses a real problem but with a generic or well-trodden approach. Incremental at best.
  3. 3Moderate. Clear problem with a reasonable approach; some novelty in framing or method beyond routine application of existing tools.
  4. 4Significant. Important problem with an original approach, or identifies a neglected problem area. A valuable contribution others could build on.
  5. 5Exceptional. Tackles a critical AI safety problem with a genuinely novel approach, or opens a new research direction. Clear theory of change. You'd be excited to share this with researchers in the area.

How sound are methodology, implementation, and findings?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Seriously flawed. Methodology broken, results uninterpretable, or implementation doesn't work.
  2. 2Weak. Approach has significant gaps: missing validation, flawed experimental design, or incomplete implementation.
  3. 3Competent. Technically solid given the short duration. Methodology makes sense, results are interpretable, limitations acknowledged, work builds toward clear conclusions.
  4. 4Strong. Thorough methodology with convincing validation. Results clearly support conclusions. Immediately useful for future work.
  5. 5Exceptional. Ambitious scope executed rigorously. Surprising findings, novel methods, or unusually robust validation.

How clearly are work, findings, and impact potential communicated?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Incomprehensible. Cannot determine what the project is actually claiming or doing.
  2. 2Hard to follow. Key information buried, missing, or diluted by excessive length. Significant effort to extract main points.
  3. 3Clear enough. Can understand the problem, approach, and results without undue effort. Core content clearly present: problem, method, findings, limitations.
  4. 4Well presented. Easy to follow, well-structured, appropriate level of detail. Target audience would get it quickly.
  5. 5Exceptionally clear. A pleasure to read. Complex ideas made accessible. Could serve as a model for how to present this type of work.
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2 judges declined to score this project.

Cite this project

@misc{babula2026goblintrap,
  title = {{GoblinTrap}},
  author = {Jacob Babula},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  note = {Submitted to AI Incident Response Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/goblintrap-nje9}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/goblintrap-nje9}
}

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