arXiv AI

How Should Diffusion Language Models Edit Code?

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 3

Knowledge Editing for Masked Diffusion Language Models

The paper investigates whether the locate‑then‑edit approach for knowledge editing, previously applied only to autoregressive language models, can be transferred to masked diffusion models (MDMs). It finds that the optimal edit location—an early‑to‑mid‑layer MLP at the last subject token—remains the same for both model types, but that MDMs suffer a sharper decline in performance when editing longer, multi‑token facts. By incorporating intermediate partially‑unmasked states into the edit optimization, the authors restore multi‑token editing performance in MDMs.

By Haewon Park, Yohan Jo
arXiv AI
Jul 28

Beyond Block Boundaries: Multi-Block Editing for Diffusion Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 22663v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Block diffusion has emerged as the dominant paradigm for scaling discrete diffusion language models (dLLMs), because decoding text in fixed-size blocks preserves parallel generation within each block while keeping the quadratic attention cost tractable.

By Xingyu Mou, Zijin Huang, Tianze Zhang, Yuxin Ma, Lanning Wei, Zengfeng Huang, Da Zheng, Lun Du
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 14

Local Edits, Global Ripples: Replay-Informed Policy Adaptation for Workflow Synthesis

The paper introduces RIPPLE, a method for adapting workflow-synthesizing agents through prompt-policy editing without retraining the underlying model. RIPPLE diagnoses failed execution trajectories, maps failures to specific policy segments, and restricts edits to those segments. It then evaluates candidate edits in isolation and replays only those that remain safe after composition, achieving up to a 23.1% improvement in validation success on a synthetic benchmark and positive gains on additional language‑model backbones.

By Manqing Mao, Hong Wang, Samson Koelle, Jie Yuan, Zhuoer Wang, James Feng, Yanjun Lin, Daniel Edmiston, Nikki Lijing Kuang, Zhecheng Sheng, Wei Niu
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Diffs vs. Whole Files: An Empirical Comparison of Iterative Edit-Based and Direct Generation for Flutter/Dart Code Models

The paper compares two output regimes for code-editing language models: direct generation, where the model outputs the entire modified file, and iterative diff-based generation, where the model emits a sequence of localized edits. Experiments on Flutter/Dart tasks show that direct generation consistently outperforms diff-based generation across metrics such as compilation success, token efficiency, and quality judgments. However, diff-based generation can be competitive for short, spatially localized edits, particularly in refactoring and error-handling tasks with few edit steps.

By Andrej Andrejev
arXiv AI
Sep 4

When Models Edit Too Much: On the Fidelity of Minimal Code Edits

The paper investigates the problem of over‑editing by large language models when repairing code, showing that even state‑of‑the‑art models like GPT‑5.5 frequently rewrite more code than necessary. Using a benchmark of 400 BigCodeBench problems with controlled AST corruptions, the authors quantify excess edits and demonstrate that a simple preservation instruction can reduce unnecessary changes and improve pass rates. They further explore training strategies, finding that reinforcement learning yields the best balance between edit fidelity and performance retention, highlighting edit fidelity as a distinct, measurable dimension of code‑repair quality.

By Tongyao Zhu, Wei Hern Lim, Min-Yen Kan
arXiv AI
Aug 13

Hybrid-Policy Self-Editing for Composable Unstructured Knowledge Editing

arXiv:2608. 11660v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) achieve remarkable performance across natural language tasks, yet they are trained on static corpora and their knowledge quickly becomes outdated in a fast-changing world.

By Tianci Liu, Zihan Dong, Tianchun Li, Yi-Chung Chen, Qiming Cao, Xingchen Wang, Shiyang Wang, Zichen Miao, Linjun Zhang, Haoyu Wang, Jing Gao
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 3

When Models Edit Too Much: On the Fidelity of Minimal Code Edits

The paper investigates the problem of over‑editing by large language models (LLMs) when repairing code, showing that even state‑of‑the‑art models like GPT‑5.5 often rewrite more code than necessary. Using a benchmark of 400 BigCodeBench problems with controlled AST‑level corruptions, the authors quantify over‑editing and demonstrate that a simple preservation instruction can significantly reduce excess edits and cognitive complexity while improving Pass@1. They further explore post‑training strategies, finding that reinforcement learning yields the best balance between edit fidelity and performance retention, thereby establishing edit fidelity as a distinct, measurable dimension of code‑repair quality.