The rapid integration of large language model-based agents into recommender systems has driven a shift from static, ranking-based pipelines toward autonomous and interactive systems that can reason, plan, and act. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of this emerging landscape by introducing a unified taxonomy grounded in the level of autonomy and three core paradigms of agentic recommender systems: agent-assisted recommendation, agent-as-recommender, and agent-as-user-simulator.
Although large language models (LLMs) have recently gained traction in recommender systems due to their strong reasoning capabilities and extensive world knowledge, previous LLM-based agents suffer from hallucination and context-length limitations, and thus are not suitable for full-ranking recommendation tasks. To circumvent these limitations through architectural design rather than modifying the LLM itself, we propose an agent-based recommendation framework, memory-based $\textbf{P}$ersonalized $\textbf{R}$ecommendation $\textbf{T}$ool learning via autonomous language $\textbf{A}$gents (PRTA), in which an LLM acts as a central planner interacting with multiple recommendation models as tools.
arXiv:2607. 19739v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Although large language models (LLMs) have recently gained traction in recommender systems due to their strong reasoning capabilities and extensive world knowledge, previous LLM-based agents suffer from hallucination and context-length limitations, and thus are not suitable for full-ranking recommendation tasks.
By Mingdai Yang, Zhiwei Liu, Weizhi Zhang, Yibo Wang, Hao Peng, Philip Yu
arXiv:2607. 20482v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in large language models have enabled web agents to autonomously execute complex tasks.
By Seungbin Yang, Chaewoon Ki, Dohyun Lee, Jaegul Choo, ChaeHun Park
CORAL is an LLM‑native harness that automates continual optimization of production recommender systems. It operates in a closed loop: an agent observes system signals, reasons over past decisions, and uses tools—including a numerical optimizer—to reconfigure the recommender while staying within a fixed operating budget. In A/B experiments on two large social platforms, CORAL improved engagement without extra serving cost on one platform and reduced serving cost without harming engagement on the other, demonstrating that a single agentic loop can replace manual engineering for ongoing system tuning.
By Muhammad Rafay Azhar, Yuhang Zhou, Gilbert Jiang, Yuchen Wang, Rahul Sharma, Matthew DeSousa, Jiayi Liu, Xin Guo, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan
arXiv:2511. 22130v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: To navigate ever-shifting real-world environments, agents must grapple with incomplete knowledge and adapt their strategies through experience.
By Gilbert Yang, Yaqin Chen, Thomson Yen, Hongseok Namkoong
PersonaMem-v3 is a benchmark and evaluation harness designed to assess omni-platform personal intelligence for AI agents. It is built from over one million anonymized real-world engagement histories, covering social media, chatbots, calendars, and AI companions, and tracks user preferences and habits over time. The benchmark tests agents on personalization, LLM-powered recommendation, proactiveness, agentic tool use, and geo-temporal reasoning, evaluating their ability to infer holistic user understanding, personalize responses, rerank recommendations, follow user steering, and avoid inappropriate personalization.
By Bowen Jiang, Yuan Yuan, Zhuoqun Hao, Yuchen Liu, Maohao Shen, Sihao Chen, Gregory Wornell, Chris Callison-Burch, Lyle Ungar, Dan Roth, Qi Guo, Xiangjun Fan, Camillo J. Taylor, Hanchao Yu
arXiv:2607. 03162v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM-powered agents struggle with personalization when users issue raw, underspecified queries.
By Garry Yang, Zizhe Chen, Xinru Chen, Yongqiang Chen, Jianxiang Wang, Deyu Zou, Linyi Ding, Jialiang Wu, Yunzhong He, Yu Gong, James Cheng, Huaixiao Tou
CAR A is a recommendation framework that treats recommendation as a structured decision‑making process. It separates recommendation into two stages: candidate filtering, which narrows the search space using coarse preference constraints, and dual‑perspective decision modeling, which captures decisions through affective and rational judgments. A boundary‑aware KTO strategy is introduced to prioritize instructions that the model can solve occasionally but not consistently, thereby enriching preference signals. Experiments on three Amazon Reviews domains show CAR A outperforms baselines, achieving up to a 10.15% relative improvement on most metrics.
By Weijun Gao, Jinyang Dong, Chuanru Ren, Hengxiao Li
arXiv:2609.36488v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents have demonstrated strong performance on complex web navigation tasks, yet they remain brittle in real-world settings...
By Dongchan Shin, Xing Han L\`u, Jiaqi Deng, Jay Gala, Tom\'as Vergara Browne, Jaewon Moon, Fengyuan Liu, Alexandre Drouin, Siva Reddy, Alexandre Lacoste
arXiv:2609.38397v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Virtual clients offer a cost-effective approach to support applications such as A/B testing, recommender system development, and interface evaluation....
By Yunan Lu, Shuang Xie, Meghna Allamudi, Mingyu Zhao, Han Li, Lingyun Wang, Zhou Yu
arXiv:2605. 12887v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Web-enabled LLM agents are changing how online information influences search outcomes.
By Hengwei Ye, Jiasheng Mao, Zhenhan Guan, Zheng Tian