FeatureArc is a new benchmark that evaluates coding agents on the evolution of software features, requiring agents to extend a feature across multiple stages while preserving earlier functionality. The benchmark uses a pipeline that constructs tasks from real repository histories, validates fail‑to‑pass and pass‑to‑pass tests, and covers four programming languages. In tests on 73 tasks, agents performed well on the first stage (62.7% success) but dropped to 28.5% when the entire feature was evaluated, with inherited defects causing most failures.
By Yunlong Wang, Alyssa Wu, Cuiyun Gao, Jia Feng, Songyuanyi Lu, Zhichao Hu
arXiv:2607. 28591v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Scaling coding agents requires a continuing supply of executable data for training, benchmarking, and continuous evaluation.
By Haomin Qi, Xingliang Wang, Xuanqi Gao, Baihui Sang, Xin Zhang, Minghua Ma, Pengfei Gao, Yu Kang, Qingwei Lin, Saravan Rajmohan, Dongmei Zhang, Qi Zhang
arXiv:2607. 03691v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Coding agents, autonomous systems that use large language models (LLMs) to resolve software engineering tasks, rely on agent harness: a middleware layer in between a developer and a large language model that orchestrates system prompts, tool execution, context management, and iterative reasoning loops.
By Oussama Ben Sghaier, Hao Li, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan
Scaling coding agents requires a continuing supply of executable data for training, benchmarking, and continuous evaluation. Each task must couple a realistic software state with a specification, development tools, and reliable verification.
arXiv:2603. 13428v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Real-world software must continuously evolve to meet ever-changing and open-ended requirements.
By Gangda Deng, Zhaoling Chen, Zhongming Yu, Haoyang Fan, Yuhong Liu, Yuxin Yang, Dhruv Parikh, Rajgopal Kannan, Le Cong, Mengdi Wang, Qian Zhang, Viktor Prasanna, Xiangru Tang, Xingyao Wang
arXiv:2603. 13428v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: With AI agents increasingly deployed as long-running systems, it becomes essential to autonomously construct and continuously evolve customized software to enable interaction within dynamic environments.
By Gangda Deng, Zhaoling Chen, Zhongming Yu, Haoyang Fan, Yuhong Liu, Yuxin Yang, Dhruv Parikh, Rajgopal Kannan, Le Cong, Mengdi Wang, Qian Zhang, Viktor Prasanna, Xiangru Tang, Xingyao Wang
arXiv:2609.38269v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Coding agents are increasingly asked to build software rather than patch it, yet benchmarks for from-scratch repository construction are mostly limit...
By Pei Yang, Tianyu Shi, Yuhang Yao, Wanyi Chen, Tongyun Yang, Dun Pei, Haonan Wang, Pengbin Feng, Guanxu Yu, Jingchun Huang, Zeyu Zhang, Shuhan Sun, Hao Li, Xiang Li, Jie Xiao, Xinyu Wang, Hanxin Chen, Daqi Li, Qi Jia, Hongshan Lin, Zhizhou Gu, Zijun Tian, Weizhi Du, Lynn Ai, Eric Yang
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
The paper presents a systematic analysis of five state‑of‑the‑art automated program repair agents, tracing their decision‑making across 500 real‑world repair tasks. It finds that while the agents perform well on simple fixes, they struggle with logic‑intensive bugs, often producing verbose, overfitted patches that pass tests without addressing root causes. Key bottlenecks identified include poor test generation, limited regression test selection, and reliance on primitive tooling without access to debuggers or advanced program analysis tools.
By Ira Ceka, Hailie Mitchell, Saurabh Pujar, Luca Buratti, Shyam Ramji, Junfeng Yang, Gail Kaiser, Baishakhi Ray
E2E-SWE is a benchmark that tests large language models’ ability to create complete, functional software repositories from scratch. It includes 186 tasks across 11 programming languages, each requiring an agent to build an installable project based solely on a natural‑language specification and an empty workspace, while passing a hidden test suite. The benchmark was crafted by software engineers and LLMs, then refined through iterative verification by autonomous agents to ensure clarity and solvability.
By Hantian Ding, Chloe Bi, Jiacheng Zhu, John Yang, Matt Deitke, Pengcheng Yin, Zijian Wang, Rui Hou
arXiv:2607. 03691v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Coding agents, autonomous systems that use large language models (LLMs) to resolve software engineering tasks, rely on agentic scaffolding: a middleware layer in between a developer and a large language model that orchestrates system prompts, tool execution, context management, and iterative reasoning loops.
By Oussama Ben Sghaier, Hao Li, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan
arXiv:2606.21804v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Maintainability is a core dimension of software engineering, shaping how code is written, reviewed, and developed over time. While coding age...
By Shaswat Patel, Betty Li Hou, Arun Purohit, Kai Xu, Jane Pan, He He, Valerie Chen