The paper introduces PlanPool, a method for agentic Text-to-SQL systems to manage clarification questions by maintaining a mutable question pool. By requiring agents to explicitly ask or drop each planned question, PlanPool improves ambiguity coverage and reduces silent failures compared to unconstrained or prompt-based approaches. Experiments on benchmarks derived from BIRD-Interact and Spider show that PlanPool achieves competitive execution accuracy while better handling underspecification.
arXiv:2609.37588v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Users of language-based assistive agents often make ambiguous requests. In response, an assistant can either directly act on its interpretation of the...
Users of language-based assistive agents often make ambiguous requests. In response, an assistant can either directly act on its interpretation of the request --- risking misalignment with the user --...
arXiv:2609.23939v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Effective communication between users and AI agents is essential for human-AI collaboration. The XY problem is a well-known communication pitfall where...
CONTRA is a training‑free method that discovers and qualifies behavior‑changing questions for selective clarification in large language model (LLM) code generation. It first generates candidate questions, filters out those unrelated to required behavior or already resolved, then creates programs conditioned on two plausible answers to check for stable behavioral differences on shared inputs. Experiments on ClarifyCodeBench show that CONTRA achieves the highest F1 across four coding agents, outperforming baselines by 13.88 percentage points, and it is also implemented as a Claude Code plugin for practical use.
arXiv:2608.22266v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In the context of information seeking, conversational agents are undergoing an evolution from reactive tools to proactive, personalized assistants. A c...
arXiv:2607. 14105v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: For Large Language Models to reliably answer user queries, users must clearly specify requirements, context, and constraints.
arXiv:2606. 03135v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) agents often operate under underspecified user instructions, where latent uncertainty over user intent leads to erroneous tool actions.
The paper presents a tri‑agent framework for evaluating large language models’ question‑clarification abilities. It involves a Question Clarifying Agent that identifies ambiguities and asks follow‑up questions, a Respondent Agent that simulates human replies, and an Evaluator Agent that judges the dialogue using metrics such as ambiguity handling, question quality, dialogue efficiency, language appropriateness, and intent alignment. The authors illustrate the approach with synthetic supply‑chain data and discuss validating the evaluator against human judgments.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in interactive systems where understanding user intent precisely is paramount. A key capability for such systems is effective question clarificat...
The paper argues that large language models need adaptive reasoning rather than fixed reasoning budgets. It shows that over‑reasoning leads to high computational cost without accuracy gains, while under‑reasoning results in incorrect or incomplete solutions. The authors evaluate these failure modes on MATH‑500 and the GAIA benchmark, highlighting the need for dynamic reasoning allocation in agentic AI systems.
The paper introduces OR‑Clarify, a benchmark that tests whether large language models can identify missing elements in natural‑language optimization requests before formulating a mathematical model. Each task provides a partial problem description and hides structured slots; agents interact with a simulated user to recover these slots, with metrics for accuracy, stopping decisions, and interaction cost. The authors also propose InterOPT, a two‑stage framework that detects unresolved gaps and decides whether to ask further questions or stop, achieving superior slot recovery in choice‑based experiments and competitive performance in open‑ended settings.
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as interactive assistants for technical problem solving. However, when users provide incomplete descriptions or plausible but unverified explanations, LLMs may prematurely align with these assumptions and propose solutions before collecting sufficient evidence.