arXiv AI

REFINE: A Multi-Agent LLM Approach for Evidence-Guided Code Refactoring

REFINE is a tool-agnostic, evidence-aware multi-agent approach that generates Java file-level refactoring candidates by combining static analysis, smell-informed planning, LLM-based transformation, and automated re-analysis. In experiments on 450 Java files from 15 open-source systems, REFINE reduced detected code smells by 68–73% across three LLM configurations, achieving higher median reductions with smaller edits compared to a direct-prompt baseline. However, the tool’s outputs still pose risks such as assert/fail-call changes and public-method removal, requiring compilation, testing, dependency analysis, and human review before deployment.

arXiv AI
3d ago

RefactorPlatform: An Open-Source Harness for Controlled Evaluation of Repository-Scale Refactoring Agents

RefactorPlatform is an open‑source harness that standardizes the evaluation of repository‑scale refactoring agents by fixing the environment and systematically varying design choices such as model backbone, execution regime, and prompt specificity. Each run operates in an isolated workspace, logs detailed telemetry, and verifies changes with AST‑based checks. Experiments on 100 RefactorBench tasks show that AST‑aware chunking improves performance by 25‑30%, a lean retrieval‑augmented single agent outperforms a sub‑agent configuration, and retrieval’s accuracy gains offset its token overhead, keeping cost per successful refactoring unchanged.

By Aziz Ben Amor, Drish Mali, Mann Acharya, Vijayasri Iyer, S\'ebastien Brati\`eres
arXiv AI
Aug 11

A Unified Issue Resolution Benchmark for Requirement Clarification, Planning, and Code Generation for Coding Agents

arXiv:2608. 09072v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model-powered coding agents are increasingly used to modify existing code repositories, for example, by adding features or fixing bugs.

By Xin Zhou, Chun Yong Chong, Kisub Kim, Yun Peng, Rui Shu, Zihan Wu, Xu Han, Guowen Yuan, Zeyang Zhuang, Jounghoon Kim, Jeongjin Ju, Seongmin Ju, Taein Yoon, David Lo
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 6

ReCodeAgent: A Multi-agent Workflow for Language-Agnostic Translation and Validation of Large-Scale Repositories

arXiv:2604. 07341v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Most repository-level code translation and validation techniques have been evaluated on a single source-target programming language (PL) pair, owing to the complex engineering effort required to adapt new PL pairs.

By Ali Reza Ibrahimzada, Brandon Paulsen, Daniel Kroening, Reyhaneh Jabbarvand
arXiv AI
Aug 14

Specification-first convergence with an AI coding agent: a case study of dismantling a core architectural invariant across 189 files in a 717k-line codebase with no test oracle and no human code review

arXiv:2608. 12440v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper reports a single, fully instrumented case study of a large-scale architectural refactoring by an AI coding agent under a specification-first protocol, with no human review of the generated code and no pre-existing oracle to validate the target behaviour.

By Joel Abenhaim