Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Real-World Code Repair
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
We tackle the challenge of training reliable code-fixing agents in real repositories, where complex builds and shifting dependencies make evaluation unstable. We developed a verifiable pipeline with success defined as post-fix build validation and improved reproducibility across ~1K real issues by pinning dependencies and disabling automatic upgrades. Building on this, we introduced a scalable simplified pipeline for large-scale reinforcement learning (RL). Using this setup, we supervised fine-tuned Qwen3-32B in the full pipeline and applied RL on top of the SFT model in the simplified environment. The SFT model distilled from GPT-4.1 trajectories performs on par while being 56x smaller, and RL added 7-20% absolute gains under matched train-test conditions. "Thinking mode" was on par or worse in our experiments. Both SFT and RL models failed to generalize across environments, highlighting the importance of matching train-test environments for building reliable real-world code-fixing agents.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 13 of its 19 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Oct 2025.
Builds on
13 of 19 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Agentic Bug Reproduction for Effective Automated Program Repair at Google3 Feb
- 2025Evaluating Agent-based Program Repair at Google13 Jan
Other references · 11
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- 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
- 2021RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embeddingcited by 4,703
- 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
- 2022Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCodecited by 1,462
- 2022CodeRL: Mastering Code Generation through Pretrained Models and Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 358
- 2023Effective Long-Context Scaling of Foundation Modelscited by 303
- 2024RLEF: Grounding Code LLMs in Execution Feedback with Reinforcement Learningcited by 151
- 2024Enhancing Code LLMs with Reinforcement Learning in Code Generation: A Surveycited by 83
- 2024CoRNStack: High-Quality Contrastive Data for Better Code Retrieval and Rerankingcited by 37
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- 2026Teaching Agents to Code Reliably
- 2026SPROUT: Scaling Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Software Engineering
- 2026Socratic-SWE: Self-Evolving Coding Agents via Trace-Derived Agent Skills