# Position: Scaling LLM Agents Requires Asymptotic Analysis with LLM Primitives

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04358 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04358/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 49 of its 89 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12712/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [Mixtral of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04088/) (2024)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06292/) (2024)
- [ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07924/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models as Optimizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03409/) (2023)
- [FrugalGPT: How to Use Large Language Models While Reducing Cost and Improving Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05176/) (2023)
- [Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01680/) (2024)
- [Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Large Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14608/) (2024)
- [Faith and Fate: Limits of Transformers on Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18654/) (2023)
- [Sparse Sinkhorn Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11296/) (2020)
- [RouterBench: A Benchmark for Multi-LLM Routing System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12031/) (2024)
- [GraphRouter: A Graph-based Router for LLM Selections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03834/) (2024)
- [Beyond Chinchilla-Optimal: Accounting for Inference in Language Model Scaling Laws](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00448/) (2023)
- [Evolution through Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08896/) (2022)
- [Language Model Crossover: Variation through Few-Shot Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12170/) (2023)
- [Keep the Cost Down: A Review on Methods to Optimize LLM' s KV-Cache Consumption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18003/) (2024)
- [Evolutionary Computation in the Era of Large Language Model: Survey and Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10034/) (2024)
- [Text Modular Networks: Learning to Decompose Tasks in the Language of Existing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00751/) (2020)
- [Evolving Deeper LLM Thinking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09891/) (2025)
- [VLM Agents Generate Their Own Memories: Distilling Experience into Embodied Programs of Thought](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14596/) (2024)
- [Multi-modal Agent Tuning: Building a VLM-Driven Agent for Efficient Tool Usage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15606/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [A Survey on Test-Time Scaling in Large Language Models: What, How, Where, and How Well?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24235/) (2025)
- [How to Interpret Agent Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13625/) (2026)
- [Automatic Prompt Optimization for Dataset-Level Feature Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13922/) (2026)
- [Is Compression Really Linear with Code Intelligence?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11441/) (2025)
- [Curriculum Guided Massive Multi Agent System Solving For Robust Long Horizon Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08545/) (2025)
- [Caesar: Deep Agentic Web Exploration for Creative Answer Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20855/) (2026)
- [An Investigation of the NeurIPS and ICML 2025 Position Tracks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16894/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Decomposing hard problems into subproblems often makes them easier and more efficient to solve. With large language models (LLMs) crossing critical reliability thresholds for a growing slate of capabilities, there is an increasing effort to decompose systems into sets of LLM-based agents, each of whom can be delegated sub-tasks. However, this decomposition (even when automated) is often intuitive, e.g., based on how a human might assign roles to members of a human team. How close are these role decompositions to optimal? This position paper argues that asymptotic analysis with LLM primitives is needed to reason about the efficiency of such decomposed systems, and that insights from such analysis will unlock opportunities for scaling them. By treating the LLM forward pass as the atomic unit of computational cost, one can separate out the (often opaque) inner workings of a particular LLM from the inherent efficiency of how a set of LLMs are orchestrated to solve hard problems. In other words, if we want to scale the deployment of LLMs to the limit, instead of anthropomorphizing LLMs, asymptotic analysis with LLM primitives should be used to reason about and develop more powerful decompositions of large problems into LLM agents.