# SWE-bench Multimodal: Do AI Systems Generalize to Visual Software Domains?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03859 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03859/

## Key facts

- Cited by 203 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [Billion-scale similarity search with GPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08734/) (2017)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01210/) (2023)
- [WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01206/) (2022)
- [OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16741/) (2024)
- [Large Language Monkeys: Scaling Inference Compute with Repeated Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21787/) (2024)
- [Measuring Coding Challenge Competence With APPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09938/) (2021)
- [CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08914/) (2023)
- [BigCodeBench: Benchmarking Code Generation with Diverse Function Calls and Complex Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15877/) (2024)
- [DS-1000: A Natural and Reliable Benchmark for Data Science Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11501/) (2022)
- [AppAgent: Multimodal Agents as Smartphone Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13771/) (2023)
- [RepoCoder: Repository-Level Code Completion Through Iterative Retrieval and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12570/) (2023)
- [RepoBench: Benchmarking Repository-Level Code Auto-Completion Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03091/) (2023)
- [CodeGeeX: A Pre-Trained Model for Code Generation with Multilingual Benchmarking on HumanEval-X](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17568/) (2023)
- [InterCode: Standardizing and Benchmarking Interactive Coding with Execution Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14898/) (2023)
- [AssistantBench: Can Web Agents Solve Realistic and Time-Consuming Tasks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15711/) (2024)
- [GPT-4V in Wonderland: Large Multimodal Models for Zero-Shot Smartphone GUI Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07562/) (2023)
- [MultiPL-E: A Scalable and Extensible Approach to Benchmarking Neural Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08227/) (2022)
- [pix2code: Generating Code from a Graphical User Interface Screenshot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07962/) (2017)
- [Execution-Based Evaluation for Open-Domain Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10481/) (2022)
- [Natural Language to Code Generation in Interactive Data Science Notebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09248/) (2022)
- [Evaluating Language Models for Efficient Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06450/) (2024)
- [EffiBench: Benchmarking the Efficiency of Automatically Generated Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02037/) (2024)
- [EnIGMA: Interactive Tools Substantially Assist LM Agents in Finding Security Vulnerabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16165/) (2024)
- [CiteME: Can Language Models Accurately Cite Scientific Claims?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12861/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 203)

- [SWE-smith: Scaling Data for Software Engineering Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21798/) (2025)
- [SWE-Bench Pro: Can AI Agents Solve Long-Horizon Software Engineering Tasks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16941/) (2025)
- [SWE-RL: Advancing LLM Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning on Open Software Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18449/) (2025)
- [KernelBench: Can LLMs Write Efficient GPU Kernels?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10517/) (2025)
- [Survey on Evaluation of LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16416/) (2025)
- [Multi-SWE-bench: A Multilingual Benchmark for Issue Resolving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02605/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21046/) (2025)
- [Agentic Harness Engineering: Observability-Driven Automatic Evolution of Coding-Agent Harnesses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25850/) (2026)
- [SWE-Lancer: Can Frontier LLMs Earn 1 Million from Real-World Freelance Software Engineering?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12115/) (2025)
- [Perception, Reason, Think, and Plan: A Survey on Large Multimodal Reasoning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04921/) (2025)
- [SWE-PolyBench: A multi-language benchmark for repository level evaluation of coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08703/) (2025)
- [WebGen-Bench: Evaluating LLMs on Generating Interactive and Functional Websites from Scratch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03733/) (2025)
- [AutoPresent: Designing Structured Visuals from Scratch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00912/) (2025)
- [MLR-Bench: Evaluating AI Agents on Open-Ended Machine Learning Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19955/) (2025)
- [LLM Agents for Education: Advances and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11733/) (2025)
- [SWE-EVO: Benchmarking Coding Agents in Long-Horizon Software Evolution Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18470/) (2025)
- [ProgramBench: Can Language Models Rebuild Programs From Scratch?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03546/) (2026)
- [Interaction2Code: Benchmarking MLLM-based Interactive Webpage Code Generation from Interactive Prototyping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03292/) (2024)
- [ComputerRL: Scaling End-to-End Online Reinforcement Learning for Computer Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14040/) (2025)
- [DeepSWE: Measuring Frontier Coding Agents on Original, Long-Horizon Engineering Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.07946/) (2026)
- [Code to Think, Think to Code: A Survey on Code-Enhanced Reasoning and Reasoning-Driven Code Intelligence in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19411/) (2025)
- [A Survey on the Optimization of Large Language Model-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12434/) (2025)
- [DesignBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for MLLM-based Front-end Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06251/) (2025)
- [SWE-chat: Coding Agent Interactions From Real Users in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20779/) (2026)
- [Recent Advances in Large Langauge Model Benchmarks against Data Contamination: From Static to Dynamic Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17521/) (2025)
- [TDD-Bench Verified: Can LLMs Generate Tests for Issues Before They Get Resolved?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02883/) (2024)
- [LongCLI-Bench: A Preliminary Benchmark and Study for Long-horizon Agentic Programming in Command-Line Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14337/) (2026)
- [Stop Comparing LLM Agents Without Disclosing the Harness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23950/) (2026)
- [SWE-Lego: Pushing the Limits of Supervised Fine-tuning for Software Issue Resolving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01426/) (2026)
- [Toward Generalizable Evaluation in the LLM Era: A Survey Beyond Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18838/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous systems for software engineering are now capable of fixing bugs and developing features. These systems are commonly evaluated on SWE-bench (Jimenez et al., 2024a), which assesses their ability to solve software issues from GitHub repositories. However, SWE-bench uses only Python repositories, with problem statements presented predominantly as text and lacking visual elements such as images. This limited coverage motivates our inquiry into how existing systems might perform on unrepresented software engineering domains (e.g., front-end, game development, DevOps), which use different programming languages and paradigms. Therefore, we propose SWE-bench Multimodal (SWE-bench M), to evaluate systems on their ability to fix bugs in visual, user-facing JavaScript software. SWE-bench M features 617 task instances collected from 17 JavaScript libraries used for web interface design, diagramming, data visualization, syntax highlighting, and interactive mapping. Each SWE-bench M task instance contains at least one image in its problem statement or unit tests. Our analysis finds that top-performing SWE-bench systems struggle with SWE-bench M, revealing limitations in visual problem-solving and cross-language generalization. Lastly, we show that SWE-agent's flexible language-agnostic features enable it to substantially outperform alternatives on SWE-bench M, resolving 12% of task instances compared to 6% for the next best system.