# ADEPTS: A Capability Framework for Human-Centered Agent Design

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15885 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15885/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (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 17 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 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, 17 of 17)

- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [Concrete Problems in AI Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06565/) (2016)
- [Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08608/) (2017)
- [GR00T N1: An Open Foundation Model for Generalist Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14734/) (2025)
- [Llama Guard: LLM-based Input-Output Safeguard for Human-AI Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06674/) (2023)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [Mechanistic Interpretability for AI Safety -- A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14082/) (2024)
- [Measuring Progress on Scalable Oversight for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.03540/) (2022)
- [Survey on Evaluation of LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16416/) (2025)
- [Constitutional Classifiers: Defending against Universal Jailbreaks across Thousands of Hours of Red Teaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18837/) (2025)
- [Large Language Model-Based Agents for Software Engineering: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02977/) (2024)
- [Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14499/) (2025)
- [Deep Research Agents: A Systematic Examination And Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18096/) (2025)
- [Human-Centered Explainable AI (XAI): From Algorithms to User Experiences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.10790/) (2021)
- [OS-Harm: A Benchmark for Measuring Safety of Computer Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14866/) (2025)
- [Superintelligent Agents Pose Catastrophic Risks: Can Scientist AI Offer a Safer Path?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15657/) (2025)
- [Generalist Virtual Agents: A Survey on Autonomous Agents Across Digital Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10943/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models have paved the way to powerful and flexible AI agents, assisting humans by increasingly integrating into their daily life. This flexibility, potential, and growing adoption demands a holistic and cross-disciplinary approach to developing, monitoring and discussing the capabilities required for agent-driven user experiences. However, current guidance on human-centered AI agent development is scattered: UX heuristics focus on interface behaviors, engineering taxonomies describe internal pipelines, and ethics checklists address high-level governance. There is no concise, user-facing vocabulary that tells teams what an agent should fundamentally be able to do. We introduce ADEPTS, a capability framework defining a set of core user-facing capabilities to provide unified guidance around the development of AI agents. ADEPTS is based on six principles for human-centered agent design, that express the minimal, user-facing capabilities an AI agent should demonstrate to be understandable, controllable and trustworthy in everyday use. ADEPTS complements existing frameworks and taxonomies; differently from them, it sits at the interface between technical and experience development. By presenting ADEPTS, we aim to condense complex AI-UX requirements into a compact framework that is actionable guidance for AI researchers, designers, engineers, and policy reviewers alike. We believe ADEPTS has the potential of accelerating the improvement of user-relevant agent capabilities, of easing the design of experiences that take advantage of those capabilities, and of providing a shared language to track and discuss progress around the development of AI agents.