The paper introduces CABRA, a synthetic benchmark that constructs coding tasks from scratch using call‑graph transformations and scales difficulty along four axes: function traversal, search, runtime resolution, and instruction following. Experiments with eight large language models and six coding agents on 6,840 CABRA tasks show that while LLM accuracy degrades with task size, agents maintain high performance by leveraging tools; larger tasks trigger more tool calls, and a separate study on SWE‑bench verifies that tool‑call counts better predict agent accuracy than lines of code edited. The authors argue that CABRA exposes weaknesses in LLMs that are hidden by tool use and highlights the importance of code‑understanding abilities beyond mere editing.
whyItMatters":"The study demonstrates that coding agents’ performance is more dependent on code‑understanding than on the amount of code edited, revealing a critical bottleneck for current coding agents."
By Nishant Balepur, Kiran Tomlinson, Tobias Schnabel
arXiv:2607. 09711v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Existing agent benchmarks primarily test task completion, tool use, or skill utility, but do not isolate whether a runtime can convert evidence from its own runs into reusable skills that improve fresh executions after authoring overhead.
By Zhiyuan Peng, Xin Yin, Chenhao Ying, Zhe Cui, Zixiang Ding, Zhenhua Liu, Jiang Wu, Yuan Luo
arXiv:2607. 20468v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents are increasingly used to automate research and development tasks, yet existing benchmarks typically evaluate them on prescribed workflows or narrow action spaces.
By Jehyeok Yeon, Ben Rank, Maksym Andriushchenko
arXiv:2606. 05646v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have enabled powerful software engineering (SE) agents capable of navigating complex codebases and resolving real-world issues.
By Xuehang Guo, Zora Zhiruo Wang, Qingyun Wang, Graham Neubig, Xingyao Wang
arXiv:2608. 18242v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce ClosureBench, a constructive benchmark for compositional graph-relational reasoning with programmatically verified ground truth.
By Stefano Goria (AIM Research Lab)
arXiv:2607. 20499v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models generate plausible backend code, but a single-pass paradigm provides no guarantee of correctness or runtime reliability.
By Sai Deekshith Lekkala, Jothi Prabha Appadurai, Rohith Reddy Bellibatlu, Manpreet Singh
arXiv:2603. 24511v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We show that AI agents are capable of discovering novel algorithms for adversarial attacks against LLMs, advancing the state of the art on white-box jailbreaking and prompt injection evaluations.
By Alexander Panfilov, Peter Romov, Igor Shilov, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Jonas Geiping, Maksym Andriushchenko
The paper investigates how large language models (LLMs) handle bug fixing versus problem solving in competitive programming. Using a dataset of ~3,000 Codeforces submissions and their human fixes, the authors compare LLM-generated patches to human patches and assess whether LLMs prefer to modify buggy code or generate new solutions. Results show that LLMs often alter more lines than necessary and sometimes produce entirely new solutions, performing better when allowed to generate solutions from scratch rather than patching existing code.
By Alexandru Stefan Stoica, Traian Rebedea, Marian Cristian Mihaescu
arXiv:2609.22228v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Large language models increasingly rely on long chain-of-thought (CoT) trajectories for complex reasoning, but autoregressive generation brings subst...
By Shaolong Chen, Ang Li, Mingjie Li, Yisen Wang
The paper introduces Traverse, a benchmark of 2,518 agent trajectories and 6,967 annotated mistakes across software engineering, computer use, and science tasks, revealing that failures often go unrecovered and can cause irreversible harm before a run is deemed successful. It shows that human judges struggle to detect the first mistake in most runs, while a 4‑billion‑parameter verifier called Scout can locate failures more effectively and improve task success when used to select among candidate runs. The study demonstrates that making failure detection inexpensive and reliable can enable long‑horizon agents to learn from their own mistakes and increase trustworthiness in autonomous AI.
By Salman Rahman, Yubin Kim, Mihir Parmar, A. Ali Heydari, Genglin Liu, Simon A. Lee, Weizhi Zhang, Arian Hosseini, Ahmed A. Metwally, Yuzhe Yang, Baharan Mirzasoleiman, Xin Liu, Pavel Izmailov, Saadia Gabriel, Mark Malhotra, Shwetak Patel, Daniel McDuff, Hamid Palangi
arXiv:2605.29054v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Migrating a machine-learning codebase across frameworks--for example from PyTorch to JAX--is a routine but costly engineering task that is fu...
By Tao Feng, Jiefeng Chen, Linxin Song, Yufan Zhuang, Yue Huang, Bhavana Dalvi Mishra, Chi Wang, Xiangru Tang, Jieyu Zhao, Ge Liu, Tomas Pfister, Jinsung Yoon
The paper investigates how Large Language Models (LLMs) handle bug fixing compared to human-written patches by analyzing about 3,000 Codeforces submissions. It finds that LLMs often modify more lines than necessary and sometimes produce entirely new solutions, and that they solve more problems correctly when generating solutions from scratch rather than patching existing code. The study highlights implications for AI‑assisted programming tools, suggesting a shift toward incremental problem‑solving strategies.