The rapid integration of large language model-based agents into recommender systems has driven a shift from static, ranking-based pipelines toward autonomous and interactive systems that can reason, plan, and act. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of this emerging landscape by introducing a unified taxonomy grounded in the level of autonomy and three core paradigms of agentic recommender systems: agent-assisted recommendation, agent-as-recommender, and agent-as-user-simulator.
Although large language models (LLMs) have recently gained traction in recommender systems due to their strong reasoning capabilities and extensive world knowledge, previous LLM-based agents suffer from hallucination and context-length limitations, and thus are not suitable for full-ranking recommendation tasks. To circumvent these limitations through architectural design rather than modifying the LLM itself, we propose an agent-based recommendation framework, memory-based $\textbf{P}$ersonalized $\textbf{R}$ecommendation $\textbf{T}$ool learning via autonomous language $\textbf{A}$gents (PRTA), in which an LLM acts as a central planner interacting with multiple recommendation models as tools.
arXiv:2607. 19739v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Although large language models (LLMs) have recently gained traction in recommender systems due to their strong reasoning capabilities and extensive world knowledge, previous LLM-based agents suffer from hallucination and context-length limitations, and thus are not suitable for full-ranking recommendation tasks.
By Mingdai Yang, Zhiwei Liu, Weizhi Zhang, Yibo Wang, Hao Peng, Philip Yu
arXiv:2607. 20482v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in large language models have enabled web agents to autonomously execute complex tasks.
By Seungbin Yang, Chaewoon Ki, Dohyun Lee, Jaegul Choo, ChaeHun Park
CORAL is an LLM‑native harness that automates continual optimization of production recommender systems. It operates in a closed loop: an agent observes system signals, reasons over past decisions, and uses tools—including a numerical optimizer—to reconfigure the recommender while staying within a fixed operating budget. In A/B experiments on two large social platforms, CORAL improved engagement without extra serving cost on one platform and reduced serving cost without harming engagement on the other, demonstrating that a single agentic loop can replace manual engineering for ongoing system tuning.
By Muhammad Rafay Azhar, Yuhang Zhou, Gilbert Jiang, Yuchen Wang, Rahul Sharma, Matthew DeSousa, Jiayi Liu, Xin Guo, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan
arXiv:2511. 22130v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: To navigate ever-shifting real-world environments, agents must grapple with incomplete knowledge and adapt their strategies through experience.
By Gilbert Yang, Yaqin Chen, Thomson Yen, Hongseok Namkoong