arXiv AI

Eliciting Specifications: When Does Interactive Clarification Help?

arXiv AI
Oct 9

Beyond Type-checking: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Formal Specification Generation

The paper presents a unified dataset of 350 Lean tasks to evaluate specification generation (SpecGen) for verifiable code, combining metrics of formal validity, reference similarity, equivalence, and behavioural adequacy. It highlights that restricting similarity measures to a subset of tasks can shift rankings, and shows that a perfect postcondition score can still miss critical input coverage, underscoring the need for separate feedback on input and output constraints.

By Srijith Nair, Aditya Vempaty, Jia Liu, Ashish Jagmohan
arXiv AI
Sep 11

Spec-Harness: Measuring and Improving Behavioral Adequacy of LLM-Synthesized Formal Specifications

Spec‑Harness evaluates how well large language models (LLMs) synthesize Java Modeling Language (JML) specifications by measuring behavioral adequacy across precondition and postcondition correctness and completeness. The study shows that while prompt optimization can raise verifier pass rates, many accepted specifications remain behaviorally weak, either over‑ or under‑constraining inputs and outputs. Spec‑Harness also serves as a feedback mechanism that improves the quality of specifications generated by general‑purpose coding agents and a specialized JML agent.

By Md Rakib Hossain Misu, Iris Ma, Cristina V. Lopes
arXiv AI
Sep 2

SAGE: State-Grounded, Abstention-Aware Evaluation of Task-Oriented Dialogue Agents

SAGE (State‑Grounded, Abstention‑Aware Evaluation) is a new framework for assessing task‑oriented dialogue agents that focuses on whether each turn correctly advances the workflow state rather than just the quality of the reply. It compiles workflow specifications and per‑turn state differences into schema‑grounded criteria, then evaluates them through a cascade of symbolic rules and encoder/NLI verifiers that abstain instead of guessing, producing a turn‑level decision with an evidence trace. In experiments across MultiWOZ, Schema‑Guided Dialogue, and ABCD datasets, SAGE‑Core—using only symbolic rules and on‑device encoders—outperforms all evaluated LLM‑based judges, including GPT‑4.1 variants, while incurring zero paid LLM cost.

By Rayan Khoury, Shih-Yao Lin, Pratyush Mishra
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Who Holds the Pen? Let Specifications, Not Agents, Sign Off

The paper argues that large language model agents should not be the sole authority on whether they have satisfied a task. It identifies two gaps—understanding–execution and state–authority—where agents may claim completion without actually meeting the specification. The authors propose SpecHarness, a framework that separates agent proposals from authoritative state by requiring evidence from qualified providers to confirm compliance, and demonstrate its effectiveness on guideline‑following and artifact‑generation tasks.

By Haiqing Li, Xin Ma, Yinhao Wu, Wenliang Zhong, Feng Jiang, Thao M. Dang, Xiao Hu, Hehuan Ma, Yuzhi Guo, Junzhou Huang
arXiv Computation and Language
5d ago

ANCHOR: Assessing Naturalistic Constraint Hierarchies and Ordering in Repository-Grounded Agentic Coding

arXiv:2610.16859v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: For repository-grounded coding agents, a functionally correct patch is not necessarily an acceptable one: developers also constrain how the task mu...

By Wenqiang Zhu, Xinping Lei, Zhiyi Lai, Zhengshuo Gong, Tianzhuang He, Songwei Yu, Weihao Li, Jingxuan Xu, Zihang Xu, Gang Wu, Zhongqiu Wang, Yuhui Bai, Jie Li, Zhao Liu, Junhao Fan, Yan Wu, Yanan Wu, Jiaheng Liu, Quan Gu, Ariel Deng