Multi-Agent Code Verification via Information Theory
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
LLMs generate buggy code: 29.6% of SWE-bench solved patches fail, 62% of BaxBench solutions have vulnerabilities, and existing tools only catch 65% of bugs with 35% false positives. We built CodeX-Verify, a multi-agent system that uses four specialized agents to detect different types of bugs. We prove mathematically that combining agents with different detection patterns finds more bugs than any single agent when the agents look for different problems, using submodularity of mutual information under conditional independence. Measuring agent correlation of rho = 0.05 to 0.25 confirms they detect different bugs. Testing on 99 code samples with verified labels shows our system catches 76.1% of bugs, matching the best existing method (Meta Prompt Testing: 75%) while running faster and without test execution. We tested all 15 agent combinations and found that using multiple agents improves accuracy by 39.7 percentage points (from 32.8% to 72.4%) compared to single agents, with diminishing returns of +14.9pp, +13.5pp, and +11.2pp for agents 2, 3, and 4, validating our theoretical model. The best two-agent combination (Correctness + Performance) reaches 79.3% accuracy. Testing on 300 real patches from Claude Sonnet 4.5 runs in under 200ms per sample, making this practical for production use.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 6 of its 29 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Nov 2025.
Builds on
6 of 29 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems for Software Engineering: Literature Review, Vision and the Road Ahead7 Apr
- 2024MAGIS: LLM-Based Multi-Agent Framework for GitHub Issue Resolution26 Mar
Other references · 4
- 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
- 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
- 2024Vulnerability Detection with Code Language Models: How Far Are We?cited by 133
- 2024Validating LLM-Generated Programs with Metamorphic Prompt Testingcited by 6
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
- 2026MultiVer: Zero-Shot Multi-Agent Vulnerability Detectioncited by 1
- 2026MultiVer: Zero-Shot Multi-Agent Vulnerability Detection19 Feb 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
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- 2026CheckerBench: Can Long-Horizon Agents Synthesize Static-Analysis Checkers?
- 2024Evaluating Software Development Agents: Patch Patterns, Code Quality, and Issue Complexity in Real-World GitHub Scenarios
- 2026SelfHeal: Empirical Fix Pattern Analysis and Bug Repair in LLM Agents
- 2024An Empirical Study on LLM-based Agents for Automated Bug Fixing
- 2026Arbiter: Detecting Interference in LLM Agent System Prompts
- 2026GBQA: A Game Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs as Quality Assurance Engineers