mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

VISTA: A Test-Time Self-Improving Video Generation Agent

arXiv 2510.15831 ↗First posted 17 Oct 2025cs.CVcited by 26

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Abstract (arXiv)

Despite rapid advances in text-to-video synthesis, generated video quality remains critically dependent on precise user prompts. Existing test-time optimization methods, successful in other domains, struggle with the multi-faceted nature of video. In this work, we introduce VISTA (Video Iterative Self-improvemenT Agent), a novel multi-agent system that autonomously improves video generation through refining prompts in an iterative loop. VISTA first decomposes a user idea into a structured temporal plan. After generation, the best video is identified through a robust pairwise tournament. This winning video is then critiqued by a trio of specialized agents focusing on visual, audio, and contextual fidelity. Finally, a reasoning agent synthesizes this feedback to introspectively rewrite and enhance the prompt for the next generation cycle. Experiments on single- and multi-scene video generation scenarios show that while prior methods yield inconsistent gains, VISTA consistently improves video quality and alignment with user intent, achieving up to 60% pairwise win rate against state-of-the-art baselines. Human evaluators concur, preferring VISTA outputs in 66.4% of comparisons.

Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 41 of its 85 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Oct 2025.

Builds on

41 of 85 references.

References · 41

  1. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  2. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,317
  3. 2016Improved Techniques for Training GANscited by 2,938
  4. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  5. 2021CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioningcited by 2,388
  6. 2023VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Modelscited by 1,755
  7. 2024Video-MME: The First-Ever Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark of Multi-modal LLMs in Video Analysiscited by 1,375
  8. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
  9. 2023MVBench: A Comprehensive Multi-modal Video Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,086
  10. 2022CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformerscited by 973
  11. 2023Automatic Prompt Optimization with "Gradient Descent" and Beam Searchcited by 628
  12. 2023RLAIF vs. RLHF: Scaling Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback with AI Feedbackcited by 615
29 more
  1. 2024Movie Gen: A Cast of Media Foundation Modelscited by 614
  2. 2024Sora: A Review on Background, Technology, Limitations, and Opportunities of Large Vision Modelscited by 467
  3. 2023Large Language Models Are Not Robust Multiple Choice Selectorscited by 454
  4. 2024LLMs-as-Judges: A Comprehensive Survey on LLM-based Evaluation Methodscited by 451
  5. 2023EvalCrafter: Benchmarking and Evaluating Large Video Generation Modelscited by 332
  6. 2024VideoPhy: Evaluating Physical Commonsense for Video Generationcited by 215
  7. 2022Optimizing Prompts for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 204
  8. 2024VideoScore: Building Automatic Metrics to Simulate Fine-grained Human Feedback for Video Generationcited by 190
  9. 2021NISQA: A Deep CNN-Self-Attention Model for Multidimensional Speech Quality Prediction with Crowdsourced Datasetscited by 189
  10. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Self-Evolving AI Agents: A New Paradigm Bridging Foundation Models and Lifelong Agentic Systemscited by 177
  11. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
  12. 2024Aligning with Human Judgement: The Role of Pairwise Preference in Large Language Model Evaluatorscited by 146
  13. 2024MMAudio: Taming Multimodal Joint Training for High-Quality Video-to-Audio Synthesiscited by 134
  14. 2024The Prompt Report: A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering Techniquescited by 115
  15. 2025One-Minute Video Generation with Test-Time Trainingcited by 100
  16. 2024Improving Text-to-Image Consistency via Automatic Prompt Optimizationcited by 88
  17. 2023High-Fidelity and Freely Controllable Talking Head Video Generationcited by 42
  18. 2024Mora: Enabling Generalist Video Generation via A Multi-Agent Frameworkcited by 41
  19. 2024Evaluation Agent: Efficient and Promptable Evaluation Framework for Visual Generative Modelscited by 41
  20. 2024TAVGBench: Benchmarking Text to Audible-Video Generationcited by 33
  21. 2025Audio-centric Video Understanding Benchmark without Text Shortcutcited by 33
  22. 2025FilmAgent: A Multi-Agent Framework for End-to-End Film Automation in Virtual 3D Spacescited by 28
  23. 2025VPO: Aligning Text-to-Video Generation Models with Prompt Optimizationcited by 27
  24. 2024VideoAgent: Self-Improving Video Generationcited by 24
  25. 2024Prompt-A-Video: Prompt Your Video Diffusion Model via Preference-Aligned LLMcited by 22
  26. 2025The Devil is in the Prompts: Retrieval-Augmented Prompt Optimization for Text-to-Video Generationcited by 21
  27. 2025Maestro: Self-Improving Text-to-Image Generation via Agent Orchestrationcited by 18
  28. 2024Video Quality Assessment: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 15
  29. 2025What Makes a Good Natural Language Prompt?cited by 6

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 23.

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  1. 2025RAPO++: Cross-Stage Prompt Optimization for Text-to-Video Generation via Data Alignment and Test-Time Scalingcited by 9
  2. 2026VQQA: An Agentic Approach for Video Evaluation and Quality Improvementcited by 8
  3. 2025Planning with Sketch-Guided Verification for Physics-Aware Video Generationcited by 6
  4. 2026SPIRAL: Self-Evolving Action-Conditioned Video Generation via Reflective Planning Agentscited by 5
  5. 2026GroundShot: Visually Consistent Multi-Shot Long Video Generation via Entity-Grounded Shot Schedulingcited by 4
  6. 2026BrandFusion: A Multi-Agent Framework for Seamless Brand Integration in Text-to-Video Generationcited by 3
  7. 2025Active Intelligence in Video Avatars via Closed-loop World Modelingcited by 2
  8. 2026COMIC: Agentic Sketch Comedy Generationcited by 2
  9. 2026FilmWorld: Agentic Novel-to-Film Generation through Dynamic Cinematic World Modelingcited by 2
  10. 2026TransVLM: A Vision-Language Framework and Benchmark for Detecting Any Shot Transitionscited by 1
  11. 2026Bridging Creative Intent and Visual Quality: Creator-Driven Recurrent Video Generation with Agentic Feedback Loopscited by 1
  12. 2026WanPE: Towards Cinematic Prompt Enhancement for Modern Text-to-Video Generationcited by 1
14 more
  1. 2026Retrieval, Refinement, and Ranking for Text-to-Video Generation via Prompt Optimization and Test-Time Scalingcited by 0
  2. 2026SPEAR: Code-Augmented Agentic Prompt Optimizationcited by 0
  3. 2026Reasoning Arena: Trace Tournaments When Verifiable Rewards Fall Shortcited by 0
  4. 2026PermaVid: Consistent Video Generation Across Edits via Disentangled Context Memorycited by 0
  5. 2026Test-Time Scaling for Video Diffusion Models via Diagnosis-Guided Candidate Recyclingcited by 0
  6. 2026CineForge: Self-Improving Agents for Long-Horizon Video Generationcited by 0
  7. 2026Motion-Omni: End-to-End Joint Speech and Full-Body Motion for Spoken Dialoguecited by 0
  8. 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 0
  9. 2026AgenticGen: Reward-Guided Agentic Video Generation for Advertisingcited by 0
  10. 2026VideoGen-Agent: Reinforcing Video Generation Agentscited by 0
  11. 2026Don't Read the Log: Execution Traces Contaminate Verifiers in Video-Generation Agentscited by 0
  12. 2026MVAgent: Multi-Agent Video Generation via Consistent Condition Construction and Shot-Level Policy Optimizationcited by 0
  13. 2026SkillPE: Creativity-Oriented Cinematic Skill Evolution for Text-to-Video Prompt Engineeringcited by 0
  14. 2026Towards Unified Evaluation of Prompt Enhancers for Video Generationcited by 0

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  1. 2026VideoWeaver: Evaluating and Evolving Skills for Agentic Long Video Generation
  2. 2025VideoGen-Eval: Agent-based System for Video Generation Evaluation
  3. 2026Beyond Trial-and-Error: Agentic Optimization for Image-to-Video Adherence
  4. 2024GenMAC: Compositional Text-to-Video Generation with Multi-Agent Collaboration
  5. 2026Identity-Preserving Text-to-Video Generation via Agentic Enhancement and Semantic Repair
  6. 2026DirectorBench: Diagnosing Long-Form Video Generation with Personalized Multi-Agent Evaluation
  7. 2026VideoAgent: All-in-One Framework for Video Understanding and Editing
  8. 2025Stealing Creator's Workflow: A Creator-Inspired Agentic Framework with Iterative Feedback Loop for Improved Scientific Short-form Generation