mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Transductive Visual Programming: Evolving Tool Libraries from Experience for Spatial Reasoning

arXiv 2512.20934 ↗First posted 24 Dec 2025cs.CV cs.AI cs.CLcited by 3

On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Spatial reasoning in 3D scenes requires precise geometric calculations that challenge vision-language models. Visual programming addresses this by decomposing problems into steps calling specialized tools, yet existing methods rely on either fixed toolsets or speculative tool induction before solving problems, resulting in suboptimal programs and poor utilization of induced tools. We present Transductive Visual Programming (TVP), a novel framework that builds new tools from its own experience rather than speculation. TVP first solves problems using basic tools while accumulating experiential solutions into an Example Library, then abstracts recurring patterns from these programs into reusable higher-level tools for an evolving Tool Library. This allows TVP to tackle new problems with increasingly powerful tools learned from experience. On Omni3D-Bench, TVP achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming GPT-4o by 22% and the previous best visual programming system by 11%. Our transductively learned tools are used 5x more frequently as core program dependency than inductively created ones, demonstrating more effective tool discovery and reuse. The evolved tools also show strong generalization to unseen spatial tasks, achieving superior performance on benchmarks from SpatialScore-Hard collection without any testset-specific modification. Our work establishes experience-driven transductive tool creation as a powerful paradigm for building self-evolving visual programming agents that effectively tackle challenging spatial reasoning tasks. We release our code at https://transductive-visualprogram.github.io/.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 23 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Dec 2025.

Builds on

23 of 42 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 20253D-Generalist: Self-Improving Vision-Language-Action Models for Crafting 3D Worlds9 Jul
  2. 2025Perspective-Aware Reasoning in Vision-Language Models via Mental Imagery Simulation24 Apr
  3. 20243DSRBench: A Comprehensive 3D Spatial Reasoning Benchmark10 Dec

Other references · 20

  1. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
  2. 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,719
  3. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  4. 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,210
  5. 2024Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Reportcited by 1,203
  6. 2023Large Language Models as Tool Makerscited by 303
  7. 2024MANTIS: Interleaved Multi-Image Instruction Tuningcited by 216
  8. 2025SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skillscited by 192
  9. 2025Cambrian-S: Towards Spatial Supersensing in Videocited by 134
  10. 2023CRAFT: Customizing LLMs by Creating and Retrieving from Specialized Toolsetscited by 129
  11. 2025Alita: Generalist Agent Enabling Scalable Agentic Reasoning with Minimal Predefinition and Maximal Self-Evolutioncited by 116
  12. 2025Inducing Programmatic Skills for Agentic Taskscited by 111
8 more
  1. 2023CREATOR: Tool Creation for Disentangling Abstract and Concrete Reasoning of Large Language Modelscited by 93
  2. 2024TroVE: Inducing Verifiable and Efficient Toolboxes for Solving Programmatic Taskscited by 75
  3. 2024Do Vision-Language Models Represent Space and How? Evaluating Spatial Frame of Reference Under Ambiguitiescited by 59
  4. 2023LILO: Learning Interpretable Libraries by Compressing and Documenting Codecited by 49
  5. 2025SpatialScore: Towards Comprehensive Evaluation for Spatial Intelligencecited by 24
  6. 2025STELLA: Self-Evolving LLM Agent for Biomedical Researchcited by 11
  7. 2025Language-to-Space Programming for Training-Free 3D Visual Groundingcited by 8
  8. 2025NePTune: A Neuro-Pythonic Framework for Tunable Compositional Reasoning on Vision-Languagecited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026TurtleAI: Benchmarking Multimodal Models for Visual Programming in Turtle Graphics
  2. 2026SpatialSkill: Self-Evolving Skills for Cross-View Spatial Reasoning
  3. 2026Make Geometry Matter for Spatial Reasoning
  4. 2026Thinking in Structures: Evaluating Spatial Intelligence in Constraint-Governed Spaces
  5. 2026SpaceCast-Bench: Evaluating Predictive Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
  6. 2026Reasmory: 3D Reconstruction as Explicit Memory for VLMs Spatial Reasoning
  7. 2026LAST: Leveraging Tools as Hints to Enhance Spatial Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Models
  8. 2026From Reasoning Failures to Composable Video Spatial Intelligence