mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration Networks for Software Development

arXiv 2410.16946 ↗First posted 22 Oct 2024cs.SE cs.AI cs.MAcited by 73

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

LLM-driven multi-agent collaboration (MAC) systems have demonstrated impressive capabilities in automatic software development at the function level. However, their heavy reliance on human design limits their adaptability to the diverse demands of real-world software development. To address this limitation, we introduce EvoMAC, a novel self-evolving paradigm for MAC networks. Inspired by traditional neural network training, EvoMAC obtains text-based environmental feedback by verifying the MAC network's output against a target proxy and leverages a novel textual backpropagation to update the network. To extend coding capabilities beyond function-level tasks to more challenging software-level development, we further propose rSDE-Bench, a requirement-oriented software development benchmark, which features complex and diverse software requirements along with automatic evaluation of requirement correctness. Our experiments show that: i) The automatic requirement-aware evaluation in rSDE-Bench closely aligns with human evaluations, validating its reliability as a software-level coding benchmark. ii) EvoMAC outperforms previous SOTA methods on both the software-level rSDE-Bench and the function-level HumanEval benchmarks, reflecting its superior coding capabilities. The benchmark can be downloaded at https://yuzhu-cai.github.io/rSDE-Bench/.

Key facts. Cited by 73 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 28 of its 33 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Oct 2024.

Builds on

28 of 33 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024MapCoder: Multi-Agent Code Generation for Competitive Problem Solving18 May
  2. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering6 May
  3. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation16 Aug
  4. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Development16 Jul

Other references · 24

  1. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  2. 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,509
  3. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  4. 2023Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflectioncited by 1,800
  5. 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
  6. 2022Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCodecited by 1,427
  7. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,348
  8. 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,332
  9. 2023ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debatecited by 724
  10. 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 580
  11. 2023Can Large Language Models Transform Computational Social Science?cited by 245
  12. 2023Exploring Large Language Models for Communication Games: An Empirical Study on Werewolfcited by 238
12 more
  1. 2024Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agentscited by 210
  2. 2023LooGLE: Can Long-Context Language Models Understand Long Contexts?cited by 200
  3. 2023RoCo: Dialectic Multi-Robot Collaboration with Large Language Modelscited by 171
  4. 2023War and Peace (WarAgent): Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Simulation of World Warscited by 143
  5. 2023Can Large Language Models Really Improve by Self-critiquing Their Own Plans?cited by 107
  6. 2024Symbolic Learning Enables Self-Evolving Agentscited by 104
  7. 2024Beyond the Limits: A Survey of Techniques to Extend the Context Length in Large Language Modelscited by 71
  8. 2023Towards an Understanding of Large Language Models in Software Engineering Taskscited by 67
  9. 2024ChatGLM-Math: Improving Math Problem-Solving in Large Language Models with a Self-Critique Pipelinecited by 47
  10. 2024Self-Alignment of Large Language Models via Monopolylogue-based Social Scene Simulationcited by 46
  11. 2024Ada-LEval: Evaluating long-context LLMs with length-adaptable benchmarkscited by 32
  12. 2024CodeScore-R: An Automated Robustness Metric for Assessing the FunctionalCorrectness of Code Synthesiscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 37; 2026: 36.

73 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 294
  2. 2025Multi-agent Architecture Search via Agentic Supernetcited by 164
  3. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
  4. 2025G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 112
  5. 2025AgenTracer: Who Is Inducing Failure in the LLM Agentic Systems?cited by 105
  6. 2025AgentNet: Decentralized Evolutionary Coordination for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 86
  7. 2025A Survey on (M)LLM-Based GUI Agentscited by 61
  8. 2025ML-Master: Towards AI-for-AI via Integration of Exploration and Reasoningcited by 57
  9. 2025EvoFlow: Evolving Diverse Agentic Workflows On The Flycited by 49
  10. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 47
  11. 2025Collab-Overcooked: Benchmarking and Evaluating Large Language Models as Collaborative Agentscited by 39
  12. 2025Adaptive Graph Pruning for Multi-Agent Communicationcited by 28
38 more
  1. 2025ML-Agent: Reinforcing LLM Agents for Autonomous Machine Learning Engineeringcited by 26
  2. 2025Heterogeneous Swarms: Jointly Optimizing Model Roles and Weights for Multi-LLM Systemscited by 22
  3. 2025OptimAI: Optimization from Natural Language Using LLM-Powered AI Agentscited by 22
  4. 2025Large Language Model-based Data Science Agent: A Surveycited by 22
  5. 2026From Failed Trajectories to Reliable LLM Agents: Diagnosing and Repairing Harness Flawscited by 21
  6. 2025The Lighthouse of Language: Enhancing LLM Agents via Critique-Guided Improvementcited by 19
  7. 2025GNNs as Predictors of Agentic Workflow Performancescited by 17
  8. 2025Graph-Augmented Large Language Model Agents: Current Progress and Future Prospectscited by 14
  9. 2025AgentBreeder: Mitigating the AI Safety Risks of Multi-Agent Scaffolds via Self-Improvementcited by 13
  10. 2025MaintainCoder: Maintainable Code Generation Under Dynamic Requirementscited by 13
  11. 2025SWE-Dev: Evaluating and Training Autonomous Feature-Driven Software Developmentcited by 13
  12. 2026EvolveRouter: Co-Evolving Routing and Prompt for Multi-Agent Question Answeringcited by 13
  13. 2025SafeSieve: From Heuristics to Experience in Progressive Pruning for LLM-based Multi-Agent Communicationcited by 12
  14. 2026OFA-MAS: One-for-All Multi-Agent System Topology Design based on Mixture-of-Experts Graph Generative Modelscited by 12
  15. 2026Effective Strategies for Asynchronous Software Engineering Agentscited by 12
  16. 2025Software Development Life Cycle Perspective: A Survey of Benchmarks for Code Large Language Models and Agentscited by 11
  17. 2025Prompt Stability Matters: Evaluating and Optimizing Auto-Generated Prompt in General-Purpose Systemscited by 10
  18. 2026SkillGraph: Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Collaboration with Multimodal Graph Topologycited by 8
  19. 2025E2Edev: Benchmarking Large Language Models in End-to-End Software Development Taskcited by 6
  20. 2026RecNet: Self-Evolving Preference Propagation for Agentic Recommender Systemscited by 6
  21. 2025The Era of Agentic Organization: Learning to Organize with Language Modelscited by 5
  22. 2026Beyond Individual Intelligence: Surveying Collaboration, Failure Attribution, and Self-Evolution in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 5
  23. 2026The Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvementcited by 5
  24. 2025Learning to Be A Doctor: Searching for Effective Medical Agent Architecturescited by 4
  25. 2025Cross-Task Experiential Learning on LLM-based Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 4
  26. 2026Self-Evolving Agents as Dynamic Graph Transformation: A Survey and New Perspectivecited by 4
  27. 2025Co-Saving: Resource Aware Multi-Agent Collaboration for Software Developmentcited by 3
  28. 2025Designing LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems for Software Engineering Tasks: Quality Attributes, Design Patterns and Rationalecited by 3
  29. 2025CubeBench: Diagnosing Interactive, Long-Horizon Spatial Reasoning Under Partial Observationscited by 3
  30. 2026EVOCHAMBER: Test-Time Co-evolution of Multi-Agent System at Individual, Team, and Population Scalescited by 3
  31. 2026Game-Theoretic Lens on LLM-based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 2
  32. 2026HIPO: Instruction Hierarchy via Constrained Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  33. 2026Experience as a Compass: Multi-agent RAG with Evolving Orchestration and Agent Promptscited by 2
  34. 2026Learning to Interrupt in Language-based Multi-agent Communicationcited by 2
  35. 2026LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems for Code Generation: A Multi-Vocal Literature Reviewcited by 2
  36. 2026AgentStream: How Well Do Self-Evolving LLM Agents Perform Under Streaming Tasks?cited by 2
  37. 2026Self-Evolving Coding Agentscited by 2
  38. 2026AgentChaos: Chaos Engineering for Agent Systems via Programmatic Fault Injectioncited by 2

50 most cited of 73 All 73 (JSON)

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  2. 2026TheBotCompany: Self-Organizing Multi-agent Systems for Continuous Software Development
  3. 2024CodePori: Large-Scale System for Autonomous Software Development Using Multi-Agent Technology
  4. 2025The Rise of AI Teammates in Software Engineering (SE) 3.0: How Autonomous Coding Agents Are Reshaping Software Engineering
  5. 2024SWE-Search: Enhancing Software Agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search and Iterative Refinement
  6. 2024MaCTG: Multi-Agent Collaborative Thought Graph for Automatic Programming
  7. 2024Improving Performance of Commercially Available AI Products in a Multi-Agent Configuration
  8. 2025SWE-EVO: Benchmarking Coding Agents in Long-Horizon Software Evolution Scenarios