arXiv:2608.28648v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study how instruction-tuned LLMs arbitrate direct conflicts between system and user instructions. We introduce a benchmark of 41 paired constraints...
By Enrique Balp-Straffon, Chih-Hao Hsu, Rushiraj Gadhvi, Sunishchal Dev, Callum Stuart McDougall, Anusha Mujumdar
The paper investigates how co-installed coding‑agent skills can conflict, causing the model to choose a similar skill over the intended one based solely on name and description. An empirical study of 20,947 repositories uncovered 822,109 candidate skill pairs, with 312 confirmed conflicts tested across three models, revealing that nearly one in four installed skills is overridden by a similar skill. Key findings include that conflicts often involve normative skills, that the installed skill loses core functions in about one‑fifth of runs, and that the first skill read determines the outcome, suggesting benchmarks should evaluate exclusive core functions and platforms should guard the initial read.
By Chaoliang Yan, Zihao Xu, Yuekang Li, Shangzhi Xu, Yi Liu, Gelei Deng, Siqi Ma
The paper introduces Many-Tier Instruction Hierarchy (ManyIH), a new framework for resolving conflicts among instructions with arbitrarily many privilege levels in large language model agents. It presents ManyIH-Bench, a benchmark featuring 853 agentic tasks that require navigating up to 12 levels of conflicting instructions across 46 real-world agents. Experiments show current models achieve only about 40% accuracy when instruction conflict scales, highlighting a gap in fine-grained, scalable conflict resolution.
By Jingyu Zhang, Tianjian Li, William Jurayj, Hongyuan Zhan, Benjamin Van Durme, Daniel Khashabi
arXiv:2607. 02255v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Memory for a long-horizon LLM agent is a contract about what each future decision is allowed to see.
By Xiangchen Cheng, Yunwei Jiang, Jianwen Sun, Zizhen Li, Chuanhao Li, Xiangcheng Cao, Yihao Liu, Fanrui Zhang, Li Jin, Kaipeng Zhang
Hierarchical orchestration, in which a Manager agent reviews worker output and can send it back for revision, is the default coordination pattern in production multi-agent LLM frameworks. Classical or...
AOS-Bench evaluates large language model agents as dynamic workload managers, testing their ability to handle multiple concurrent tasks under shared CPU and memory limits. The benchmark shows that isolated task success does not predict performance in a streaming workload, with significant drops in heavy and medium scenarios. Execution‑policy experiments reveal that simple concurrency controls can rival more complex management strategies, highlighting the importance of workload management as a distinct agent capability.
By Erle Zhu, Genrui Zhang, Keyang Hu, Mingyu Su, Hongning Wang
arXiv:2609.14767v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Hierarchical orchestration, in which a Manager agent reviews worker output and can send it back for revision, is the default coordination pattern in...
By Burak Agachan, Max van Duijn, Amirhossein Zohrehvand
arXiv:2610.17757v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language model agents can follow complex human instructions to solve real-world tasks. In practice, however, initial instructions are often incom...
By Kaiming Liu, Yuxuan Liu, Jinrui Ju, Minyuan Ruan, Xuanyu Lei, Peng Li, Yang Liu
SWE‑Duel proposes a self‑scaling benchmark for coding agents, where tasks and oracles are generated at evaluation time to prevent data leakage and adapt difficulty to participant performance. In the arena, two agents take turns as Red and Blue: Red proposes a feature, injects a subtle bug, and must repair it blind, while Blue reviews the pull request without knowing the bug and must pass all tests. A tournament of 11 model‑harness participants on 15 repositories across five languages showed GPT‑5.5/Codex CLI as the top solver and Claude Opus 4.8/mini‑swe‑agent as the top task author, with newer model versions producing harder tasks for older ones.
By Wei Minn, Zhensu Sun, Lwin Khin Shar, David Lo
arXiv:2606. 07808v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reasoning language models deployed in agentic workflows must follow an instruction hierarchy: when instructions from different sources conflict, the model should obey the highest-privilege applicable instruction.
By Sanjay Kariyappa, G. Edward Suh
arXiv:2603.01209v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: In CodeAct, language-model agents write Python that calls tools and use execution feedback to choose actions. Persistent runtimes preserve Python v...
By Victor May, Van Khue Nguyen, Aaditya Salgarkar, Yishan Wang, Diganta Misra, Huu Nguyen
The paper introduces CTXAgent, a self‑controlled context management system for large language model agents that compacts conversation history when a token threshold is reached. It evaluates seven frontier models, comparing their ability to manage context with and without dedicated tools, and benchmarks performance across coding, scientific, and software engineering tasks. Results show that well‑managed models keep live context below 100k tokens, maintain high benchmark scores, and achieve significant cost reductions, with Claude Opus 5.5 outperforming its explicit configuration by 34% lower cost.
By Matthias Busch, Marius Tacke, Roland C. Aydin, Christian Feiler, Christian J. Cyron