arXiv Computation and Language

Beneath the Diff: Diagnosing and Mitigating Algorithmic Mode Collapse in Code-Level Autonomous Research Loops

The paper investigates code-level autonomous research loops (ARLs) where a language model edits training pipelines to improve an in-loop metric. It identifies a failure mode called algorithmic mode collapse, where edits become semantically uniform despite surface diversity, leading to a growing gap between in-loop gains and independent evaluation. The authors propose Diversity‑Aware Proposal Sampling (DAPS), a lightweight method that reduces semantic decay by 69.1% and boosts faithfulness by over 80% while maintaining optimization speed.

arXiv AI
Oct 9

TestJack: Should you trust the results in coding benchmarks? Agentic Coding Benchmarks Auditing via Evaluator Evolution

TestJack is a scalable framework that audits large language model (LLM) coding agents by generating new tests for each trial, focusing on prompt requirements that may be violated. It keeps only the tests passed by the ground‑truth patch and re‑examines failures, providing replayable evidence for each confirmed error. In experiments across six model backends and five benchmarks, TestJack found that 34.4% of trials deemed correct actually violated task requirements, reducing the overall resolution rate from 50.6% to 33.2%.

By Shuangjie Yao, Hao Wang, Koushik Sen, Simin Chen, Baishakhi Ray, Dawn Song
arXiv AI
Sep 10

AdaExplore: Failure-Driven Adaptation and Diversity-Preserving Search for Efficient Kernel Generation

arXiv:2604.16625v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent large language model (LLM) agents have shown promise in using execution feedback for test-time adaptation. However, robust self-improv...

By Weihua Du, Jingming Zhuo, Yixin Dong, Andre Wang He, Weiwei Sun, Zeyu Zheng, Manupa Karunaratne, Ivan Fox, Tim Dettmers, Tianqi Chen, Yiming Yang, Sean Welleck
arXiv AI
Aug 28

AgentFold: Closed-Loop Agentic Search for Protein Folding Model Design

AgentFold is a multi‑agent framework that treats protein‑folding model design as a closed‑loop search over executable code variants. Starting from the ESMFold codebase, the agents generate hypotheses, modify and debug code, evaluate model variants, and store both successes and failures in structured memory, guided by an MCTS‑style policy that allocates GPU resources. In an engineering‑scale experiment, AgentFold explored about 80 variants using 5,000 GPU‑hours and 170 million LLM tokens, improving the best lDDT score by 7.5% over independent Codex proposals and outperforming a random‑search baseline, while also uncovering empirical design patterns such as the benefits of early, soft, learnable priors.

By Mingquan Liu, Jiangyu Chen, Hanqun Cao, Xujun Zhang, Pengsen Ma, Xiangru Tang, Shuting Jin, Zhuo Yang, Tianfan Fu, Fang Wu, Xiangxiang Zeng
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

SAGE-Loop: Reliable Closed-Loop LLM-Driven AutoML with Trial-and-Correction and Adaptive Ensembling

SAGE-Loop is a new closed‑loop, self‑adaptive AutoML framework that uses large language models to generate and validate machine learning pipelines in multiple rounds, allowing trial‑and‑repair and adaptive ensemble selection for both supervised and unsupervised tasks. It addresses the lack of instant feedback and correction in existing AutoML by enabling process‑level recovery from failures and dynamic use of model diversity. Experiments on 20 public datasets show consistent improvements in performance and stability across classification, regression, and clustering, and demonstrate the system’s ability to recover from execution failures.

By Junquan Gu, Shibo Cui, Xiangfeng Luo, Hang Yu
arXiv AI
Oct 1

RankEvolve: A Reliable Multi-Agent Auto-Research Harness for Evolving Ranking Models

RankEvolve is an auto‑research framework that evolves generative ranking models by orchestrating multiple large‑language‑model coding agents through an Executable Operating Protocol (EOP). The system compiles a state machine that enforces phases, gates, branches, and loops, while a meta‑meta‑harness lets agents review and repair each other’s code. In budget‑matched experiments, heterogeneous composition of agents raised execution accuracy from 45.8 % to 62.5 % and reduced silent critical‑defect rates, achieving notable gains on the HSTU recommender and other benchmarks.

By Zheng Chen, Linfeng Liu, Hong Li, Hong Yan
arXiv AI
6d ago

Don't Regenerate, Debug: A Domain-Specific Agent for Repairing Near-Miss Accelerator Kernels

The paper introduces a domain‑specific debugging agent for repairing near‑miss accelerator kernels, arguing that debugging is more efficient than regenerating kernels from scratch. It tackles knowledge scarcity, integrity, and cost control through pattern retrieval, anti‑cheat detection, and convergence safeguards. Empirical results show the debug agent achieves a 66.7% Pass@1 rate and uses 92.8% fewer tokens per success compared to traditional regeneration methods.

By Yansong Sun, Shenxiu Wu, Siyuan Chen, Runlin Hou, Junhao Qiu, Junming Cao, Shudi Shao, Zhichao Lu, Qingfu Zhang
arXiv AI
Oct 9

Code Understanding is a Bottleneck for Coding Agents

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