# Large Language Models are Few-shot Testers: Exploring LLM-based General Bug Reproduction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.11515 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11515/

## Key facts

- Cited by 111 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 23 Sep 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 111)

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- [If LLM Is the Wizard, Then Code Is the Wand: A Survey on How Code Empowers Large Language Models to Serve as Intelligent Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00812/) (2024)
- [Improving Code Generation by Training with Natural Language Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16749/) (2023)
- [Automatic Semantic Augmentation of Language Model Prompts (for Code Summarization)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06815/) (2023)
- [On the Use of Agentic Coding: An Empirical Study of Pull Requests on GitHub](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14745/) (2025)
- [Emotionally Numb or Empathetic? Evaluating How LLMs Feel Using EmotionBench](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03656/) (2023)
- [Bias Testing and Mitigation in LLM-based Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14345/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models on Code Comprehension and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01240/) (2023)
- [You Name It, I Run It: An LLM Agent to Execute Tests of Arbitrary Projects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10133/) (2024)
- [Look Before You Leap: An Exploratory Study of Uncertainty Measurement for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10236/) (2023)
- [LeDex: Training LLMs to Better Self-Debug and Explain Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18649/) (2024)
- [SOEN-101: Code Generation by Emulating Software Process Models Using Large Language Model Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15852/) (2024)
- [Exploring Autonomous Agents through the Lens of Large Language Models: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04442/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models as Test Case Generators: Performance Evaluation and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13340/) (2024)
- [Otter: Generating Tests from Issues to Validate SWE Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05368/) (2025)
- [MECD: Unlocking Multi-Event Causal Discovery in Video Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17647/) (2024)
- [QualityFlow: An Agentic Workflow for Program Synthesis Controlled by LLM Quality Checks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17167/) (2025)
- [Agentic Bug Reproduction for Effective Automated Program Repair at Google](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01821/) (2025)
- [Is AI the better programming partner? Human-Human Pair Programming vs. Human-AI pAIr Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05153/) (2023)
- [LLMEffiChecker: Understanding and Testing Efficiency Degradation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03696/) (2022)
- [From Commit Message Generation to History-Aware Commit Message Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07655/) (2023)
- [Understanding Automated Program Repair Agents Through the Lens of Traceability: An Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08311/) (2025)
- [Autonomous Large Language Model Agents Enabling Intent-Driven Mobile GUI Testing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08649/) (2023)
- [CSR-Bench: Benchmarking LLM Agents in Deployment of Computer Science Research Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06111/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Many automated test generation techniques have been developed to aid developers with writing tests. To facilitate full automation, most existing techniques aim to either increase coverage, or generate exploratory inputs. However, existing test generation techniques largely fall short of achieving more semantic objectives, such as generating tests to reproduce a given bug report. Reproducing bugs is nonetheless important, as our empirical study shows that the number of tests added in open source repositories due to issues was about 28% of the corresponding project test suite size. Meanwhile, due to the difficulties of transforming the expected program semantics in bug reports into test oracles, existing failure reproduction techniques tend to deal exclusively with program crashes, a small subset of all bug reports. To automate test generation from general bug reports, we propose LIBRO, a framework that uses Large Language Models (LLMs), which have been shown to be capable of performing code-related tasks. Since LLMs themselves cannot execute the target buggy code, we focus on post-processing steps that help us discern when LLMs are effective, and rank the produced tests according to their validity. Our evaluation of LIBRO shows that, on the widely studied Defects4J benchmark, LIBRO can generate failure reproducing test cases for 33% of all studied cases (251 out of 750), while suggesting a bug reproducing test in first place for 149 bugs. To mitigate data contamination, we also evaluate LIBRO against 31 bug reports submitted after the collection of the LLM training data terminated: LIBRO produces bug reproducing tests for 32% of the studied bug reports. Overall, our results show LIBRO has the potential to significantly enhance developer efficiency by automatically generating tests from bug reports.