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Mikael Zayenz Lagerkvist

Welcome to my personal website. I am a researcher specializing in constraint programming, combinatorial optimization, and game tree search. My work explores efficient algorithms for solving complex decision problems, particularly in the context of board games and AI systems.

Feel free to explore my research page for a comprehensive list of my publications, or check out my blog for more informal discussions and insights into my work.

Recent Updates

  • Blog Post6 min read

    zdev 1.0: yet another agentic loop, this one is mine

    When I use coding agents for work larger than a single patch, the coding harness usually handles each activity well. It can explore the repository, compare designs, implement a task, and review the result. The awkward part is keeping the work coherent between sessions. There are many systems for running agentic loops. I have built one too.

    The zdev task loop from exploration through implementation, verification, and completion
  • Blog Post20 min read

    From constraint models to playable puzzle games

    I wanted to play some puzzles produced by my constraint-programming experiments. That small wish grew into nine games.

    An in-progress square Zip puzzle with a colourful path connecting numbered cells
  • Blog Post7 min read

    Gecode 6.3.0 and 6.4.0 are released

    After a long pause, Gecode has two new releases. Gecode 6.3.0 is dated 7 July 2026, and Gecode 6.4.0 followed on 15 July.

    Gecode logo
  • Blog Post6 min read

    Propagating the minimum distance between selected points

    Selecting well-spaced points has a compact mathematical statement, but its straightforward CP model creates a distance variable for every selected pair. My ModRef 2026 paper [*Propagation Algorithms for the Minimum-Distance Constraint over Selected

    Eight candidate sites with five selected sites connected by their closest distances
  • Blog Post4 min read

    Table Talk Tuning

    Martin Butler and I needed to arrange the tables for a real wedding. Our ModRef 2026 paper No More Awkward Silences with Table Talk Tuning describes the MiniZinc model we built for that problem. A seating plan can satisfy every capacity and grouping request and still leave someone with little to talk about.

    Supported conversation topics and their scores for a table of wedding guests
  • Blog Post3 min read

    What happens when Sudoku scales?

    There is now a public collection of 434,201 generated Sudoku instances, ranging from 6×6 to 36×36. The paper describes how the collection was generated, and its experiments provide a map for navigating it.

    Propagation-based Sudoku hardness categories from 6×6 through 36×36
  • Forthcoming research paper

    No More Awkward Silences with Table Talk Tuning

    A MiniZinc model of a real wedding seating problem that includes supported conversation topics alongside capacities and grouping requests. Experiments compare the full objective with a structural-only variant and several ways to handle its priorities.

    Authors
    Martin Butler, Mikael Z. Lagerkvist
    Venue
    The 25th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef 2026), held at CP 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal
    Upper half of the first page of the Table Talk Tuning paper

Skills & Expertise

Research Areas

  • Constraint Programming
  • Combinatorial Optimization
  • Game Tree Search
  • Board Game AI
  • Machine Learning Applications

Technical Skills

  • Algorithm Design & Analysis
  • Optimization and scheduling
  • Python, C++, Java, TypeScript
  • Large Language Models and Neural Network Architectures
  • Software Engineering

Contact

Feel free to reach out to me at fromweb@zayenz.se

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