mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Enabling Agents to Communicate Entirely in Latent Space

arXiv 2511.09149 ↗First posted 12 Nov 2025cs.LG cs.AI cs.MAcited by 31

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

While natural language is the de facto communication medium for LLM-based agents, it presents a fundamental constraint. The process of downsampling rich, internal latent states into discrete tokens inherently limits the depth and nuance of information that can be transmitted, thereby hindering collaborative problem-solving. Inspired by telepathy, which bypasses symbolic language in communication, we propose Interlat (Inter-agent Latent Space Communication), a paradigm that leverages the continuous last hidden states of an LLM as a representation of its thought for direct communication (termed latent communication). An additional learned compression process further compresses latent communication via latent space reasoning. Experiments demonstrate that Interlat outperforms both fine-tuned chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting and single-agent baselines, even across heterogeneous models, promoting more exploratory behavior and enabling genuine utilization of latent information. Further compression not only substantially accelerates inference by up to 24 times but also maintains competitive performance through an efficient information-preserving mechanism. We position this work as a feasibility study of entirely latent space inter-agent communication, and our results highlight its potential, offering valuable insights for future research. Our code is available at https://github.com/XiaoDu-flying/Interlat.

Key facts. Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 31 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Nov 2025.

Builds on

31 of 46 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Augmenting Multi-Agent Communication with State Delta Trajectory24 Jun
  2. 2025MultiAgentBench: Evaluating the Collaboration and Competition of LLM agents3 Mar
  3. 2025Communicating Activations Between Language Model Agents23 Jan
  4. 2025Multi-Agent Collaboration Mechanisms: A Survey of LLMs10 Jan
  5. 2024Cut the Crap: An Economical Communication Pipeline for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems3 Oct

Other references · 26

  1. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  2. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,713
  3. 2023FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioningcited by 2,551
  4. 2017Decoupled Weight Decay Regularizationcited by 1,722
  5. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,143
  6. 2024Training Large Language Models to Reason in a Continuous Latent Spacecited by 763
  7. 2025Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail?cited by 559
  8. 2024AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generationcited by 395
  9. 2025Reasoning Models Don't Always Say What They Thinkcited by 388
  10. 2025Scaling up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning: A Recurrent Depth Approachcited by 372
  11. 2023Think before you speak: Training Language Models With Pause Tokenscited by 254
  12. 2025CODI: Compressing Chain-of-Thought into Continuous Space via Self-Distillationcited by 216
14 more
  1. 2024Trial and Error: Exploration-Based Trajectory Optimization for LLM Agentscited by 194
  2. 2024Compressed Chain of Thought: Efficient Reasoning Through Dense Representationscited by 192
  3. 2024Let's Think Dot by Dot: Hidden Computation in Transformer Language Modelscited by 186
  4. 2016Multi-Agent Cooperation and the Emergence of (Natural) Languagecited by 181
  5. 2018Emergence of Linguistic Communication from Referential Games with Symbolic and Pixel Inputcited by 102
  6. 2024Relaxed Recursive Transformers: Effective Parameter Sharing with Layer-wise LoRAcited by 72
  7. 2025A Survey on Latent Reasoningcited by 71
  8. 2025Cache-to-Cache: Direct Semantic Communication Between Large Language Modelscited by 54
  9. 2023Let Models Speak Ciphers: Multiagent Debate through Embeddingscited by 49
  10. 2025EvoAgentX: An Automated Framework for Evolving Agentic Workflowscited by 43
  11. 2025Thought Communication in Multiagent Collaborationcited by 28
  12. 2024Deliberation in Latent Space via Differentiable Cache Augmentationcited by 25
  13. 2025LLM-Based Multi-Agent Blackboard System for Information Discovery in Data Sciencecited by 15
  14. 2024AlgoFormer: An Efficient Transformer Framework with Algorithmic Structurescited by 11

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 31.

31 papers.

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  1. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 47
  2. 2026Recursive Multi-Agent Systemscited by 10
  3. 2026The Vision Wormhole: Latent-Space Communication in Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systemscited by 8
  4. 2026LCGuard: Latent Communication Guard for Safe KV Sharing in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 6
  5. 2026Beyond tokens: a unified framework for latent communication in LLM-based multi-agent systemscited by 6
  6. 2026StateBridge: Training-free Hidden-state Alignment for Latent Communication in LLM Multi-Agent Systemscited by 5
  7. 2026KV Cache Translation across Heterogeneous Large Language Modelscited by 4
  8. 2026Representational Collapse in Multi-Agent LLM Committees: Measurement and Diversity-Aware Consensuscited by 3
  9. 2026HyLaT: Efficient Multi-Agent Communication via Hybrid Latent-Text Protocolcited by 3
  10. 2026When Does Latent Communication Pay? A Causal Audit of Relayed KV Caches in Multi-Agent LLMscited by 3
  11. 2026Learning to Communicate: Toward End-to-End Optimization of Multi-Agent Language Systemscited by 2
  12. 2026When Latent Agents Lie: KV-Cache Integrity in Multi-Agent LLM Collaborationcited by 2
19 more
  1. 2026A Token/KV-Cache Communication Media Selection and Resource Allocation Strategy for Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 1
  2. 2026LatentDx: Latent Multi-Agent Communication for Cross-Hospital Rare-Disease Diagnosiscited by 1
  3. 2026Large Language Models Do Not Always Need Readable Languagecited by 1
  4. 2026Confidence Laundering in Agent Systems: Why Uncertainty Needs a Latent Carriercited by 1
  5. 2026Dual-Cache Latent Space Communication between Heterogeneous Language Modelscited by 1
  6. 2026Position: Introspective Experience from Conversational Environments as a Path to Better Learningcited by 0
  7. 2026The Bicameral Model: Bidirectional Hidden-State Coupling Between Parallel Language Modelscited by 0
  8. 2026Good Agentic Friends Do Not Just Give Verbal Advice: They Can Update Your Weightscited by 0
  9. 2026LACO: Adaptive Latent Communication for Collaborative Drivingcited by 0
  10. 2026Towards Direct Latent-Space Synthesis for Parallel Branches in LLM-Agent Workflowscited by 0
  11. 2026Engineering Trustworthy Agentic AI for Critical Systemscited by 0
  12. 2026How Far Do Simple Transformations Translate Across Text Embedding Models?cited by 0
  13. 2026MaSRead: Content-Addressed Reading of Replicated Latent Storescited by 0
  14. 2026AeroLat: Channel-Aware Latent Space Semantic Communication for Decentralized UAV Swarmscited by 0
  15. 2026Receiver-Conditioned Latent Communication gives 94% CacheBackcited by 0
  16. 2026Draft-KV: Learning Useful Latent Communication Between Language Modelscited by 0
  17. 2026LatCom: Cross-Agent Latent Compression for Efficient Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 0
  18. 2026Safety of Latent Communication in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 0
  19. 2026Beyond Final Accuracy: Auditing Communication in LLM Multi-Agent Systemscited by 0

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  3. 2026Latent Communication Between Language Model Agents: Channels, Alignment, and the Limits of Text
  4. 2025Exploring System 1 and 2 communication for latent reasoning in LLMs
  5. 2025Why do AI agents communicate in human language?
  6. 2025Direct Semantic Communication Between Large Language Models via Vector Translation
  7. 2026Multi-Head Latent Control: A Unified Interface for LLM Agent Decision Making
  8. 2025OPTAGENT: Optimizing Multi-Agent LLM Interactions Through Verbal Reinforcement Learning for Enhanced Reasoning