mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

A Survey of Large Language Model Empowered Agents for Recommendation and Search: Towards Next-Generation Information Retrieval

arXiv 2503.05659 ↗First posted 7 Mar 2025cs.IRcited by 33

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agentic recommender systems

Abstract (arXiv)

Information technology has profoundly altered the way humans interact with information. The vast amount of content created, shared, and disseminated online has made it increasingly difficult to access relevant information. Over the past two decades, recommender systems and search (collectively referred to as information retrieval systems) have evolved significantly to address these challenges. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated capabilities that surpass human performance in various language-related tasks and exhibit general understanding, reasoning, and decision-making abilities. This paper explores the transformative potential of LLM agents in enhancing recommender and search systems. We discuss the motivations and roles of LLM agents, and establish a classification framework to elaborate on the existing research. We highlight the immense potential of LLM agents in addressing current challenges in recommendation and search, providing insights into future research directions. This paper is the first to systematically review and classify the research on LLM agents in these domains, offering a novel perspective on leveraging this advanced AI technology for information retrieval. To help understand the existing works, we list the existing papers on LLM agent based recommendation and search at this link: https://github.com/tsinghua-fib-lab/LLM-Agent-for-Recommendation-and-Search.

Key facts. Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agentic recommender systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 155 of its 256 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2025.

Builds on

155 of 256 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025PersonaX: A Recommendation Agent Oriented User Modeling Framework for Long Behavior Sequence4 Mar
  2. 2025AgentSociety Challenge: Designing LLM Agents for User Modeling and Recommendation on Web Platforms26 Feb
  3. 2025A Survey on LLM-powered Agents for Recommender Systems14 Feb
  4. 2024Agentic Feedback Loop Modeling Improves Recommendation and User Simulation26 Oct
  5. 2024Prospect Personalized Recommendation on Large Language Model-based Agent Platform28 Feb
  6. 2024MACRec: a Multi-Agent Collaboration Framework for Recommendation23 Feb
  7. 2024A Multi-Agent Conversational Recommender System2 Feb
  8. 2023AgentCF: Collaborative Learning with Autonomous Language Agents for Recommender Systems13 Oct
  9. 2023Lending Interaction Wings to Recommender Systems with Conversational Agents6 Oct
  10. 2023Recommender AI Agent: Integrating Large Language Models for Interactive Recommendations31 Aug
  11. 2023RecMind: Large Language Model Powered Agent For Recommendation28 Aug
  12. 2023RAH! RecSys-Assistant-Human: A Human-Centered Recommendation Framework with LLM Agents19 Aug

Other references · 143

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,399
  3. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  4. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  5. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  6. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
  7. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  8. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  9. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  10. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  11. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  12. 2014Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translationcited by 4,057
38 more
  1. 2020Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answeringcited by 3,824
  2. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
  3. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  4. 2023QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMscited by 3,418
  5. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,211
  6. 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,576
  7. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
  8. 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,947
  9. 2022Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decodingcited by 1,653
  10. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,439
  11. 2023AWQ: Activation-aware Weight Quantization for LLM Compression and Accelerationcited by 1,298
  12. 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,242
  13. 2023Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Modelscited by 1,040
  14. 2023Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debatecited by 1,011
  15. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 876
  16. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 836
  17. 2016Wide & Deep Learning for Recommender Systemscited by 747
  18. 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agentscited by 704
  19. 2023In-Context Retrieval-Augmented Language Modelscited by 702
  20. 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 598
  21. 2023Language Agent Tree Search Unifies Reasoning Acting and Planning in Language Modelscited by 574
  22. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agentscited by 567
  23. 2024Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agentscited by 564
  24. 2024GPT-4V(ision) is a Generalist Web Agent, if Groundedcited by 563
  25. 2023Large Language Models Are Not Robust Multiple Choice Selectorscited by 486
  26. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 468
  27. 2018Fundamentals of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Networkcited by 420
  28. 2023A Survey on Large Language Models for Recommendationcited by 379
  29. 2023Language Models can Solve Computer Taskscited by 372
  30. 2023An Embodied Generalist Agent in 3D Worldcited by 365
  31. 2024WorkArena: How Capable Are Web Agents at Solving Common Knowledge Work Tasks?cited by 363
  32. 2023A Real-World WebAgent with Planning, Long Context Understanding, and Program Synthesiscited by 353
  33. 2023Large Language Models for Information Retrieval: A Surveycited by 331
  34. 2023Trusting Your Evidence: Hallucinate Less with Context-aware Decodingcited by 327
  35. 2024LongRoPE: Extending LLM Context Window Beyond 2 Million Tokenscited by 313
  36. 2023Large Language Models are Effective Text Rankers with Pairwise Ranking Promptingcited by 307
  37. 2023Towards Revealing the Mystery behind Chain of Thought: A Theoretical Perspectivecited by 294
  38. 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perceptioncited by 293

50 most cited of 143 All 143 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 13; 2026: 20.

33 papers.

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  1. 2025Learn to Memorize: Optimizing LLM-based Agents with Adaptive Memory Frameworkcited by 25
  2. 2025Coarse-to-Fine Grounded Memory for LLM Agent Planningcited by 18
  3. 2026MemRec: Collaborative Memory-Augmented Agentic Recommender Systemcited by 15
  4. 2025A Survey on Collaborative Mechanisms Between Large and Small Language Modelscited by 14
  5. 2025The Future is Agentic: Definitions, Perspectives, and Open Challenges of Multi-Agent Recommender Systemscited by 14
  6. 2026Toward Personalized LLM-Powered Agents: Foundations, Evaluation, and Future Directionscited by 14
  7. 2025MR.Rec: Synergizing Memory and Reasoning for Personalized Recommendation Assistant with LLMscited by 9
  8. 2025Collab-REC: An LLM-based Agentic Framework for Balancing Recommendations in Tourismcited by 7
  9. 2026S2GR: Stepwise Semantic-Guided Reasoning in Latent Space for Generative Recommendationcited by 6
  10. 2025LLM-guided Hierarchical Search for End-to-end Reasoning Intensive Retrievalcited by 4
  11. 2025BioMedSearch: A Multi-Source Biomedical Retrieval Framework Based on LLMscited by 4
  12. 2026Autonomous Information Seeking: A Roadmap for Agentic Recommender Systemscited by 4
21 more
  1. 2026From Atom to Community: Structured and Evolving Agent Memory for User Behavior Modelingcited by 3
  2. 2026From Query to Counsel: Structured Reasoning with a Multi-Agent Framework and Dataset for Legal Consultationcited by 3
  3. 2026SAGER: Self-Evolving User Policy Skills for Recommendation Agentcited by 3
  4. 2025BehaveGPT: A Foundation Model for Large-scale User Behavior Modelingcited by 2
  5. 2025Agent0: Leveraging LLM Agents to Discover Multi-value Features from Text for Enhanced Recommendationscited by 2
  6. 2026"I Strongly Suspect This Website Is a Scam": Benchmarking PII Leakage and Detection without Defense in Autonomous Web Agentscited by 2
  7. 2025Large language model as user daily behavior data generator: balancing population diversity and individual personalitycited by 0
  8. 2025R3A: Reinforced Reasoning for Relevance Assessment for RAG in User-Generated Content Platformscited by 0
  9. 2025AR-Med: Automated Relevance Enhancement in Medical Search via LLM-Driven Information Augmentationcited by 0
  10. 2026Emerging from Ground: Addressing Intent Deviation in Tool-Using Agents via Deriving Real Calls into Virtual Trajectoriescited by 0
  11. 2026Beyond Pipelines: A Fundamental Study on the Rise of Generative-Retrieval Architectures in Web Researchcited by 0
  12. 2026AgenticRec: A Recommendation-Oriented Agentic Framework with Progressive Tool-Integrated Reasoning Optimizationcited by 0
  13. 2026Towards Position-Robust Talent Recommendation via Large Language Modelscited by 0
  14. 2026ANCHOR: Agentic Noise Creation Framework for Human Simulation and Denoising Recommendationcited by 0
  15. 2026ShopX: A Foundation Model for Intent-to-Item Fulfillment in Agentic Shoppingcited by 0
  16. 2026APeB: Benchmarking Personalization Ability of Large Language Model Agentscited by 0
  17. 2026An LLM-powered Agentic Recommendation System for Connected TV Content Discoverycited by 0
  18. 2026ODYSSE: Episode-wise Policy Optimization for Personalized Agentic Reasoningcited by 0
  19. 2026When Memory Takes Gradients: Collaborative Vector Memory for Agentic Recommender Systemscited by 0
  20. 2026PACE: Towards Surfacing Hidden Conflicts in User Requestscited by 0
  21. 2026AtomRec: Evolving Atomic Memory for Agentic Recommendationcited by 0

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  1. 2024All Roads Lead to Rome: Unveiling the Trajectory of Recommender Systems Across the LLM Era
  2. 2025A Survey of LLM-based Deep Search Agents: Paradigm, Optimization, Evaluation, and Challenges
  3. 2025A Multi-Agent Perspective on Modern Information Retrieval
  4. 2025Towards Agentic Recommender Systems in the Era of Multimodal Large Language Models
  5. 2023How Can Recommender Systems Benefit from Large Language Models: A Survey
  6. 2025AgentRecBench: Benchmarking LLM Agent-based Personalized Recommender Systems
  7. 2025A Comprehensive Review on Harnessing Large Language Models to Overcome Recommender System Challenges
  8. 2025Multi-Agent Collaborative Filtering: Orchestrating Users and Items for Agentic Recommendations