mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

AgencyBench: Benchmarking the Frontiers of Autonomous Agents in 1M-Token Real-World Contexts

arXiv 2601.11044 ↗First posted 16 Jan 2026cs.AIcited by 26

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) based autonomous agents demonstrate multifaceted capabilities to contribute substantially to economic production. However, existing benchmarks remain focused on single agentic capability, failing to capture long-horizon real-world scenarios. Moreover, the reliance on human-in-the-loop feedback for realistic tasks creates a scalability bottleneck, hindering automated rollout collection and evaluation. To bridge this gap, we introduce AgencyBench, a comprehensive benchmark derived from daily AI usage, evaluating 6 core agentic capabilities across 32 real-world scenarios, comprising 138 tasks with specific queries, deliverables, and rubrics. These scenarios require an average of 90 tool calls, 1 million tokens, and hours of execution time to resolve. To enable automated evaluation, we employ a user simulation agent to provide iterative feedback, and a Docker sandbox to conduct visual and functional rubric-based assessment. Experiments reveal that closed-source models significantly outperform open-source models (48.4% vs 32.1%). Further analysis reveals significant disparities across models in resource efficiency, feedback-driven self-correction, and specific tool-use preferences. Finally, we investigate the impact of agentic scaffolds, observing that proprietary models demonstrate superior performance within their native ecosystems (e.g., Claude-4.5-Opus via Claude-Agent-SDK), while open-source models exhibit distinct performance peaks, suggesting potential optimization for specific execution frameworks. AgencyBench serves as a critical testbed for next-generation agents, highlighting the necessity of co-optimizing model architecture with agentic frameworks. We believe this work sheds light on the future direction of autonomous agents, and we release the full benchmark and evaluation toolkit at https://github.com/GAIR-NLP/AgencyBench.

Key facts. Cited by 26 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 20 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jan 2026.

Builds on

20 of 31 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Measuring Agents in Production2 Dec
  2. 2025The Tool Decathlon: Benchmarking Language Agents for Diverse, Realistic, and Long-Horizon Task Execution29 Oct
  3. 2025UltraHorizon: Benchmarking Agent Capabilities in Ultra Long-Horizon Scenarios26 Sep
  4. 2025LIMI: Less is More for Agency22 Sep

Other references · 16

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  3. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  4. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agentscited by 956
  5. 2025BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agentscited by 616
  6. 2025τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environmentcited by 558
  7. 2025GDPval: Evaluating AI Model Performance on Real-World Economically Valuable Taskscited by 142
  8. 2025SWE-Lancer: Can Frontier LLMs Earn 1 Million from Real-World Freelance Software Engineering?cited by 99
  9. 2025MCPMark: A Benchmark for Stress-Testing Realistic and Comprehensive MCP Usecited by 37
  10. 2025ResearcherBench: Evaluating Deep AI Research Systems on the Frontiers of Scientific Inquirycited by 30
  11. 2025InnovatorBench: Evaluating Agents' Ability to Conduct Innovative LLM Researchcited by 18
  12. 2025Towards Dynamic Theory of Mind: Evaluating LLM Adaptation to Temporal Evolution of Human Statescited by 17
4 more
  1. 2025LIMOPro: Reasoning Refinement for Efficient and Effective Test-time Scalingcited by 15
  2. 2026State of AI: An Empirical 100 Trillion Token Study with OpenRoutercited by 15
  3. 2025DatasetResearch: Benchmarking Agent Systems for Demand-Driven Dataset Discoverycited by 9
  4. 2025SCALE: Selective Resource Allocation for Overcoming Performance Bottlenecks in Mathematical Test-time Scalingcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 26.

26 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2026MemoryArena: Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Taskscited by 72
  2. 2026daVinci-Dev: Agent-native Mid-training for Software Engineeringcited by 15
  3. 2026SimCT: Recovering Lost Supervision for Cross-Tokenizer On-Policy Distillationcited by 11
  4. 2026How to Interpret Agent Behaviorcited by 8
  5. 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Applicationcited by 8
  6. 2026SWE-Chain: Benchmarking Coding Agents on Chained Release-Level Package Upgradescited by 6
  7. 2026MiniCPM-SALA: Hybridizing Sparse and Linear Attention for Efficient Long-Context Modelingcited by 4
  8. 2026daVinci-Agency: Unlocking Long-Horizon Agency Data-Efficientlycited by 3
  9. 2026FileGram: Grounding Agent Personalization in File-System Behavioral Tracescited by 3
  10. 2026EasyOPD: An Easy-to-use On-Policy Distillation Framework for Large Language Modelscited by 3
  11. 2026Evolve as a Team: Collaborative Self-Evolution for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 2
  12. 2026Aligned Agents, Biased Swarm: Measuring Bias Amplification in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 1
14 more
  1. 2026AlphaEval: Evaluating Agents in Productioncited by 1
  2. 2026EgoBench: An Interactive Egocentric Multimodal Benchmark for Tool-Using Agentscited by 1
  3. 2026Can LLM Agents Infer World Models? Evidence from Agentic Automata Learningcited by 1
  4. 2026OneDayAgent: Towards a Long-Horizon Harness for Autonomous Agentscited by 1
  5. 2026Cost-Utility Alignment in LLM Agent Trajectories:Profiling,Attribution,Diagnosis,Adaptation,and Evaluationcited by 1
  6. 2026HMACE: Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Collaborative Evolution for Combinatorial Optimizationcited by 0
  7. 2026The Cost of Knowing: A Resource-Aware Protocol for Benchmarking Hallucination Beyond Static Leaderboardscited by 0
  8. 2026LU-500: A Logo Benchmark for Concept Unlearningcited by 0
  9. 2026The Safeguard Worked. Is the LLM System Safer?cited by 0
  10. 2026xDailyBench: Benchmarking LLMs on Professional Consultation for Real-Life Problemscited by 0
  11. 2026Beyond Outcomes: Dual-View Relational Learning for Efficient Agent Benchmarkingcited by 0
  12. 2026When Fancy Eviction Fails: Rethinking Cache Replacement For LLM Prefix Reusecited by 0
  13. 2026LongHarness Bench: Stress-Testing Language Model Harnesses for Long-Context Reasoningcited by 0
  14. 2026World Potential Model: Pretrained World Knowledge as Progress Potentialscited by 0

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