# AgentAda: Skill-Adaptive Data Analytics for Tailored Insight Discovery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07421 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07421/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [FActScore: Fine-grained Atomic Evaluation of Factual Precision in Long Form Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14251/) (2023)
- [Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12186/) (2024)
- [Prometheus: Inducing Fine-grained Evaluation Capability in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08491/) (2023)
- [Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01030/) (2024)
- [DS-1000: A Natural and Reliable Benchmark for Data Science Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11501/) (2022)
- [JudgeLM: Fine-tuned Large Language Models are Scalable Judges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17631/) (2023)
- [Text and Code Embeddings by Contrastive Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10005/) (2022)
- [PandaLM: An Automatic Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Instruction Tuning Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05087/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models at Evaluating Instruction Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07641/) (2023)
- [TextGrad: Automatic "Differentiation" via Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07496/) (2024)
- [Data Interpreter: An LLM Agent For Data Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18679/) (2024)
- [Generative Judge for Evaluating Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05470/) (2023)
- [InfiAgent-DABench: Evaluating Agents on Data Analysis Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05507/) (2024)
- [StructRAG: Boosting Knowledge Intensive Reasoning of LLMs via Inference-time Hybrid Information Structurization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08815/) (2024)
- [DA-Code: Agent Data Science Code Generation Benchmark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07331/) (2024)
- [InsightBench: Evaluating Business Analytics Agents Through Multi-Step Insight Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06423/) (2024)
- [Beyond Static Datasets: A Deep Interaction Approach to LLM Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04369/) (2023)
- [INSTRUCTSCORE: Explainable Text Generation Evaluation with Finegrained Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14282/) (2023)
- [EVOR: Evolving Retrieval for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12317/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Serve as Data Analysts? A Multi-Agent Assisted Approach for Qualitative Data Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01386/) (2024)
- [Ask-EDA: A Design Assistant Empowered by LLM, Hybrid RAG and Abbreviation De-hallucination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06575/) (2024)
- [Advanced RAG Models with Graph Structures: Optimizing Complex Knowledge Reasoning and Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03572/) (2024)
- [JADE: A Linguistics-based Safety Evaluation Platform for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00286/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [SkillGuard: A Permission-Centric Framework for Agent Skill Security](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03024/) (2026)
- [Rewarding the Scientific Process: Process-Level Reward Modeling for Agentic Data Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24198/) (2026)
- [Unsupervised Skill Discovery for Agentic Data Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06416/) (2026)
- [Discovery Agents for Real-Time Analytics: Toward Proactive Insight Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27571/) (2026)
- [Fail Loudly: An Auditable Runtime for Agentic Data Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32528/) (2026)
- [SKILLLITE: Evidence-Guided Malicious Skill Auditing with Compact LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36879/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce AgentAda, the first LLM-powered analytics agent that can learn and use new analytics skills to extract more specialized insights. Unlike existing methods that require users to manually decide which data analytics method to apply, AgentAda automatically identifies the skill needed from a library of analytical skills to perform the analysis. This also allows AgentAda to use skills that existing LLMs cannot perform out of the box. The library covers a range of methods, including clustering, predictive modeling, and NLP techniques like BERT, which allow AgentAda to handle complex analytics tasks based on what the user needs. AgentAda's dataset-to-insight extraction strategy consists of three key steps: (I) a question generator to generate queries relevant to the user's goal and persona, (II) a hybrid Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-based skill matcher to choose the best data analytics skill from the skill library, and (III) a code generator that produces executable code based on the retrieved skill's documentation to extract key patterns. We also introduce KaggleBench, a benchmark of curated notebooks across diverse domains, to evaluate AgentAda's performance. We conducted a human evaluation demonstrating that AgentAda provides more insightful analytics than existing tools, with 48.78% of evaluators preferring its analyses, compared to 27.67% for the unskilled agent. We also propose a novel LLM-as-a-judge approach that we show is aligned with human evaluation as a way to automate insight quality evaluation at larger scale.