mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Oolong: Evaluating Long Context Reasoning and Aggregation Capabilities

arXiv 2511.02817 ↗First posted 4 Nov 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 40

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Abstract (arXiv)

As model context lengths continue to grow, concerns about whether models effectively use the full context length have persisted. While several carefully designed long-context evaluations have recently been released, these evaluations tend to rely on retrieval from one or more sections of the context, which allows nearly all of the context tokens to be disregarded as noise. This represents only one type of task that might be performed with long context. We introduce Oolong, a benchmark of long-context reasoning tasks that require analyzing individual chunks of text on an atomic level, and then aggregating these analyses to answer distributional questions. Oolong is separated into two task sets: Oolong-synth, a set of naturalistic synthetic tasks, where we can easily ablate components of the reasoning problem; and Oolong-real, a downstream setting which requires reasoning over real-world conversational data. Oolong requires models to reason over large quantities of examples, to perform both classification and counting in-context, and to reason over temporal and user relations. Even frontier models struggle on Oolong, with GPT-5, Claude-Sonnet-4, and Gemini-2.5-Pro all achieving less than 50% accuracy on both splits at 128K. We release the data and evaluation harness for Oolong to enable further development of models that can reason over large quantities of text.

Key facts. Cited by 40 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 40 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Nov 2025.

Builds on

40 of 63 references.

References · 40

  1. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  2. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
  3. 2017A Broad-Coverage Challenge Corpus for Sentence Understanding through Inferencecited by 2,682
  4. 2015Character-level Convolutional Networks for Text Classificationcited by 2,330
  5. 2024RULER: What's the Real Context Size of Your Long-Context Language Models?cited by 1,346
  6. 2024LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memorycited by 707
  7. 2025Stop Overthinking: A Survey on Efficient Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 464
  8. 2024LongBench v2: Towards Deeper Understanding and Reasoning on Realistic Long-context Multitaskscited by 379
  9. 2024∞Bench: Extending Long Context Evaluation Beyond 100K Tokenscited by 367
  10. 2015Towards AI-Complete Question Answering: A Set of Prerequisite Toy Taskscited by 314
  11. 2024BABILong: Testing the Limits of LLMs with Long Context Reasoning-in-a-Haystackcited by 215
  12. 2023LooGLE: Can Long-Context Language Models Understand Long Contexts?cited by 202
28 more
  1. 2023ZeroSCROLLS: A Zero-Shot Benchmark for Long Text Understandingcited by 176
  2. 2024A Survey on Large Language Model Acceleration based on KV Cache Managementcited by 131
  3. 2024In-Context Learning with Long-Context Models: An In-Depth Explorationcited by 128
  4. 2025NoLiMa: Long-Context Evaluation Beyond Literal Matchingcited by 126
  5. 2024HELMET: How to Evaluate Long-Context Language Models Effectively and Thoroughlycited by 125
  6. 2024Michelangelo: Long Context Evaluations Beyond Haystacks via Latent Structure Queriescited by 88
  7. 2025LongReason: A Synthetic Long-Context Reasoning Benchmark via Context Expansioncited by 50
  8. 2022Annotation Error Detection: Analyzing the Past and Present for a More Coherent Futurecited by 45
  9. 2022Dungeons and Dragons as a Dialog Challenge for Artificial Intelligencecited by 35
  10. 2024NeedleBench: Evaluating LLM Retrieval and Reasoning Across Varying Information Densitiescited by 32
  11. 2024Over-Reasoning and Redundant Calculation of Large Language Modelscited by 27
  12. 2024Is It Really Long Context if All You Need Is Retrieval? Towards Genuinely Difficult Long Context NLPcited by 27
  13. 2023CALYPSO: LLMs as Dungeon Masters' Assistantscited by 23
  14. 2025MoNaCo: More Natural and Complex Questions for Reasoning Across Dozens of Documentscited by 21
  15. 2021Database Reasoning Over Textcited by 20
  16. 2023FIREBALL: A Dataset of Dungeons and Dragons Actual-Play with Structured Game State Informationcited by 18
  17. 2023This is not a Dataset: A Large Negation Benchmark to Challenge Large Language Modelscited by 18
  18. 2022Detecting Label Errors by using Pre-Trained Language Modelscited by 16
  19. 2024MathHay: An Automated Benchmark for Long-Context Mathematical Reasoning in LLMscited by 13
  20. 2015SQUINKY! A Corpus of Sentence-level Formality, Informativeness, and Implicaturecited by 11
  21. 2023Do Multi-Document Summarization Models Synthesize?cited by 11
  22. 2024Exploring Prompt Engineering Practices in the Enterprisecited by 11
  23. 2024A Taxonomy for Data Contamination in Large Language Modelscited by 11
  24. 2024Holistic Reasoning with Long-Context LMs: A Benchmark for Database Operations on Massive Textual Datacited by 11
  25. 2025Conversational User-AI Intervention: A Study on Prompt Rewriting for Improved LLM Response Generationcited by 10
  26. 2025Too Long, Didn't Model: Decomposing LLM Long-Context Understanding With Novelscited by 9
  27. 2025LooGLE v2: Are LLMs Ready for Real World Long Dependency Challenges?cited by 8
  28. 2025User Prompting Strategies and ChatGPT Contextual Adaptation Shape Conversational Information-Seeking Experiencescited by 2

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Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 38.

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  1. 2025Recursive Language Modelscited by 104
  2. 2026τ-Knowledge: Evaluating Conversational Agents over Unstructured Knowledgecited by 39
  3. 2025Audio MultiChallenge: A Multi-Turn Evaluation of Spoken Dialogue Systems on Natural Human Interactioncited by 19
  4. 2026LOCA-bench: Benchmarking Language Agents Under Controllable and Extreme Context Growthcited by 14
  5. 2026Prime Agent: A Self-Improving RLM Harnesscited by 13
  6. 2026Coding Agents are Effective Long-Context Processorscited by 12
  7. 2026Decentralized Multi-Agent Systems with Shared Contextcited by 10
  8. 2026GoLongRL: Capability-Oriented Long Context Reinforcement Learning with Multitask Alignmentcited by 6
  9. 2026ReCA: Multi-Shot Long Video Extrapolation via Recursive Context Allocationcited by 6
  10. 2026Recursive Agent Optimizationcited by 5
  11. 2026LCM: Lossless Context Managementcited by 4
  12. 2026PEEK: Context Map as an Orientation Cache for Long-Context LLM Agentscited by 4
28 more
  1. 2026Think, But Don't Overthink: Reproducing Recursive Language Modelscited by 2
  2. 2026Recursive Language Models Meet Uncertainty: The Surprising Effectiveness of Self-Reflective Program Search for Long Contextcited by 2
  3. 2026Understanding LLM Performance Degradation in Multi-Instance Processing: The Roles of Instance Count and Context Lengthcited by 2
  4. 2026SLIDERS: Systematic Reviews via Automated Evidence Synthesis and Reconciliationcited by 2
  5. 2026Deep Reasoning in General Purpose Agents via Structured Meta-Cognitioncited by 2
  6. 2026ATLAS: All-round Testing of Long-context Abilities across Scalescited by 2
  7. 2026SWE-Pruner Pro: The Coder LLM Already Knows What to Prunecited by 2
  8. 2026LongCat Sparse Attention: Taming the Lightning via Streaming-aware Hierarchical Cross-Layer Indexingcited by 2
  9. 2026Probing How Scalable Table Data Enhances General Long-Context Reasoningcited by 1
  10. 2026Insights Generator: Systematic Corpus-Level Trace Diagnostics for LLM Agentscited by 1
  11. 2026Mergeable Model-Side Aggregation States for Long-Context Language Modelscited by 1
  12. 2026EnSI-RAG: Entity-Structure-Indexed Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Long-Document Question Answeringcited by 1
  13. 2026Thinking Before Thinking: Scaling Agentic Inference Through Meta-Reasoningcited by 1
  14. 2026Life-Bench: A Benchmark and Knowledge Graph Framework for Multimodal Personalization Beyond Concept Recognitioncited by 0
  15. 2026π2: Structure-Originated Reasoning Data Improves Long-Context Reasoning Ability of Large Language Modelscited by 0
  16. 2026Text Analytics Evaluation Framework: A Case Study on LLMs and Social Mediacited by 0
  17. 2026Distractor-Aware Truncation: Disentangling Context-Length Effects from Signal Loss in Long-Context LLM Benchmarkscited by 0
  18. 2026Chained Recursive Language Models for Multi-Iteration Reasoningcited by 0
  19. 2026EnSIMem: Entity-Structured Indexing for Long-Term Agent Memorycited by 0
  20. 2026No More Free Lunch: Corpus Task Complexity Matters as Corpora Growcited by 0
  21. 2026EvoIn: Bridging Evolution and Internalization for Agent Fine-Tuningcited by 0
  22. 2026LongHarness Bench: Stress-Testing Language Model Harnesses for Long-Context Reasoningcited by 0
  23. 2026LatentHarness: Learning Latent Actions for Memory and Reasoning via Counterfactual Policy Distillationcited by 0
  24. 2026Trained Agentic Context Managementcited by 0
  25. 2026LongSocialBench: Do Long-Context LLMs Understand Online Discussion Threads?cited by 0
  26. 2026TrajLong: Co-Designing Agentic and Long-Context Supervision for Mid-Trainingcited by 0
  27. 2026CacheLink: Functional KV Transport for Zero-Prefill Cross-Model Context Handoffcited by 0
  28. 2026Beyond Retrieval: Evidence Access and Event Aggregation in Agent Memorycited by 0