# EvoFlow: Evolving Diverse Agentic Workflows On The Fly

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07373 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07373/

## Key facts

- Cited by 55 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 51 of its 89 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Software engineering coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/software-engineering-coding-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.3781/) (2013)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (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)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [MiniLM: Deep Self-Attention Distillation for Task-Agnostic Compression of Pre-Trained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10957/) (2020)
- [CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17760/) (2023)
- [ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03768/) (2020)
- [HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17580/) (2023)
- [Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19118/) (2023)
- [FrugalGPT: How to Use Large Language Models While Reducing Cost and Improving Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05176/) (2023)
- [DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03714/) (2023)
- [Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03493/) (2022)
- [LLM-Blender: Ensembling Large Language Models with Pairwise Ranking and Generative Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02561/) (2023)
- [Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement Via Prompt Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16797/) (2023)
- [LLM-Planner: Few-Shot Grounded Planning for Embodied Agents with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04088/) (2022)
- [AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10762/) (2024)
- [Automated Design of Agentic Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08435/) (2024)
- [Complexity-Based Prompting for Multi-Step Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00720/) (2022)
- [Solving General Arithmetic Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.01413/) (2016)
- [Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07155/) (2024)
- [RouterBench: A Benchmark for Multi-LLM Routing System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12031/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 55)

- [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)
- [Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01990/) (2025)
- [G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07398/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey in LLM(-Agent) Full Stack Safety: Data, Training and Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15585/) (2025)
- [AgenTracer: Who Is Inducing Failure in the LLM Agentic Systems?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03312/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Trustworthy LLM Agents: Threats and Countermeasures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09648/) (2025)
- [MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18746/) (2025)
- [Atom of Thoughts for Markov LLM Test-Time Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12018/) (2025)
- [Meta Context Engineering via Agentic Skill Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21557/) (2026)
- [Recursive Harness Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15524/) (2026)
- [From Static Templates to Dynamic Runtime Graphs: A Survey of Workflow Optimization for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22386/) (2026)
- [Rethinking the Value of Multi-Agent Workflow: A Strong Single Agent Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12307/) (2026)
- [Learning to Deliberate: Meta-policy Collaboration for Agentic LLMs with Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03817/) (2025)
- [MermaidFlow: Redefining Agentic Workflow Generation via Safety-Constrained Evolutionary Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22967/) (2025)
- [AgentSwift: Efficient LLM Agent Design via Value-guided Hierarchical Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06017/) (2025)
- [Graph-Augmented Large Language Model Agents: Current Progress and Future Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21407/) (2025)
- [Self-Organizing Agent Network for LLM-based Workflow Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13732/) (2025)
- [FALAT: Tracing Failures in LLM Agent Trajectories via Dependency-Guided Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00765/) (2026)
- [Recursive Models for Long-Horizon Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02112/) (2026)
- [Lifting Traces to Logic: Programmatic Skill Induction with Neuro-Symbolic Learning for Long-Horizon Agentic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01293/) (2026)
- [Metacognitive Self-Correction for Multi-Agent System via Prototype-Guided Next-Execution Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14319/) (2025)
- [MASPO: Joint Prompt Optimization for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06623/) (2026)
- [On Training Large Language Models for Long-Horizon Tasks: An Empirical Study of Horizon Length](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02572/) (2026)
- [Do Self-Evolving Agents Forget? Capability Degradation and Preservation in Lifelong LLM Agent Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09315/) (2026)
- [From Agentification to Self-Evolving Agentic AI for Wireless Networks: Concepts, Approaches, and Future Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05596/) (2025)
- [A-MapReduce: Executing Wide Search via Agentic MapReduce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01331/) (2026)
- [Automatic Method Illustration Generation for AI Scientific Papers via Drawing Middleware Creation, Evolution, and Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29590/) (2026)
- [Cross-Task Experiential Learning on LLM-based Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23187/) (2025)
- [Efficient Tree-Structured Deep Research with Adaptive Resource Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05145/) (2025)
- [Experience-Guided Adaptation of Inference-Time Reasoning Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11519/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The past two years have witnessed the evolution of large language model (LLM)-based multi-agent systems from labor-intensive manual design to partial automation (textite.g., prompt engineering, communication topology) and eventually to fully automated design. However, existing agentic automation pipelines often lack LLM heterogeneity and focus on single-objective performance optimization, limiting their potential to combine weaker models for more customized and cost-effective solutions. To address this challenge, we propose EvoFlow, a niching evolutionary algorithm-based framework to automatically search a population of heterogeneous and complexity-adaptive agentic workflows, rather than a single homogeneous, complex workflow. Technically, EvoFlow performs textit(1) tag-based retrieval to extract parent workflows from an agentic population, evolves new workflows through textit(2) crossover and textit(3) mutation, and employs textit(4) niching-based selection to maintain population diversity and quality. Extensive evaluations across seven benchmarks demonstrate that EvoFlow is: (I) diverse, evolving a population of workflows ranging from simple I/O tasks to complex multi-turn interactions; (II) high-performing, outperforming previous handcrafted and automated workflows by 1.23%~29.86%; (III) economical, surpassing powerful llmnameo1-preview at 12.4% of its inference cost using weaker open-source models.