# LLM-based Agentic Reasoning Frameworks: A Survey from Methods to Scenarios

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17692 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17692/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 78 of its 460 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning for agents, planning and code](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-for-agents-planning-and-code/)
- 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 78)

- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03768/) (2020)
- [AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13131/) (2025)
- [BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12516/) (2025)
- [τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07982/) (2025)
- [Language Models are Multilingual Chain-of-Thought Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03057/) (2022)
- [PathVQA: 30000+ Questions for Medical Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10286/) (2020)
- [Multi-Agent Collaboration Mechanisms: A Survey of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06322/) (2025)
- [Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02716/) (2024)
- [Small Language Models are the Future of Agentic AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02153/) (2025)
- [Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey on Agentic RAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09136/) (2025)
- [S3: Social-network Simulation System with Large Language Model-Empowered Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14984/) (2023)
- [Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02957/) (2024)
- [Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21460/) (2025)
- [Agent AI: Surveying the Horizons of Multimodal Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03568/) (2024)
- [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)
- [The Landscape of Emerging AI Agent Architectures for Reasoning, Planning, and Tool Calling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11584/) (2024)
- [Progent: Securing AI Agents with Privilege Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11703/) (2025)
- [MemOS: A Memory OS for AI System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03724/) (2025)
- [GPT-4V in Wonderland: Large Multimodal Models for Zero-Shot Smartphone GUI Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07562/) (2023)
- [Memento: Fine-tuning LLM Agents without Fine-tuning LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16153/) (2025)
- [Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01990/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [The Prompt Report: A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06608/) (2024)
- [xbench: Tracking Agents Productivity Scaling with Profession-Aligned Real-World Evaluations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13651/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey in LLM(-Agent) Full Stack Safety: Data, Training and Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15585/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [ToolOrchestra: Elevating Intelligence via Efficient Model and Tool Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21689/) (2025)
- [Toward Efficient Agents: Memory, Tool learning, and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14192/) (2026)
- [AgentSM: Semantic Memory for Agentic Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15709/) (2026)
- [Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22748/) (2026)
- [The Vision Wormhole: Latent-Space Communication in Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15382/) (2026)
- [SciAgent: A Unified Multi-Agent System for Generalistic Scientific Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08151/) (2025)
- [Co-Evolving Skill Generation and Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08755/) (2026)
- [E3-TIR: Enhanced Experience Exploitation for Tool-Integrated Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09455/) (2026)
- [TimeSage-MT: A Multi-Turn Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Time Series Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01498/) (2026)
- [FAMA: Failure-Aware Meta-Agentic Framework for Open-Source LLMs in Interactive Tool Use Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25135/) (2026)
- [Beyond Preset Identities: How Agents Form Stances and Boundaries in Generative Societies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23406/) (2026)
- [DeepTutor: Towards Agentic Personalized Tutoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26962/) (2026)
- [SAG-Agent: Enabling Long-Horizon Reasoning in Strategy Games via Dynamic Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15259/) (2025)
- [Mathematical Framing for Different Agent Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04469/) (2025)
- [From Helpfulness to Toxic Proactivity: Diagnosing Behavioral Misalignment in LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04197/) (2026)
- [1D-Bench: A Benchmark for Iterative UI Code Generation with Visual Feedback in Real-World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18548/) (2026)
- [Multi-Modal Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Radiology Report Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16876/) (2026)
- [FaithEyes: Towards Faithful Tool Use via Multi-Agent Process-Image Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28225/) (2026)
- [Voice-Interactive Surgical Agent for Multimodal Patient Data Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07392/) (2025)
- [OUTLINEFORGE: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning with Explicit States for Scientific Writing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09858/) (2026)
- [Coding-Free and Privacy-Preserving Agentic Framework for Data-Driven Clinical Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12258/) (2026)
- [Agentic Frameworks for Reasoning Tasks: An Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16646/) (2026)
- [Multi-Agent Systems: From Classical Paradigms to Large Foundation Model-Enabled Futures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18133/) (2026)
- [Agents in the Wild: Where Research Meets Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.19336/) (2026)
- [APQF: Agentic Profiling-Guided Structured Pruning and Mixed-Precision Quantization with Adaptive Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05499/) (2026)
- [Jacap: Robust KV Cache Eviction via Jacobian-Based Nonlinear Information Capacity Preservation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.08131/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in LLM-based agents highlight the importance of their reasoning frameworks, which guide the problem-solving process in diverse ways. This survey introduces a unified formal language to systematically categorize these frameworks at three compositional levels: single-agent, tool-based, and multi-agent methods. Following our taxonomy, we review key application scenarios across scientific discovery, healthcare, software engineering, society, economics, and general-purpose tasks. It also compares the distinct features and evaluation strategies of each category. Through our taxonomy and comparisons, our survey explores the designs and strengths of LLM-based agentic frameworks in different scenarios, reviewing the fast-paced development of complex agentic systems in the real world.