mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Thinking Is Not Telling: Information Disclosure in User-Service LLM Agents

arXiv 2602.07796 ↗First posted 8 Feb 2026cs.CLcited by 0

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

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Abstract (arXiv)

User-engaged LLM agents increasingly operate in service scenarios where task success depends on coordination between the agent, the user, and a stateful environment. In such interactions, the agent often has access to task policies, tool results, and environment states that the user does not observe. This makes agent-user communication a central component of task completion. In this work, we study a communication-level failure mode of user-service agents: user-invisible reasoning does not necessarily translate into timely user-facing information disclosure. We introduce information disclosure as a measurable communication mechanism, covering state corrections, available options, constraints, consequences, and proactively retrieved environment information. We use this perspective to analyze the widely used user-invisible ``think'' tool, which allows agents to reason internally before responding or acting. Across five models and three user-service scenarios, we first show that enforced thinking has unstable utility. We then analyze response scaling under different think efforts and find that more internal thinking does not reliably translate into richer user-facing communication. Using evidence-grounded probing and turn-level counterfactual intervention, we show that injecting golden decision-relevant information produces the clearest improvement in First Edit Correction Rate, outperforming verbosity and direct think-content controls. This indicates that missing disclosure can causally affect the agent's immediate downstream environment-edit behavior. We further find that a lightweight disclosure-aware prompt mitigates degradation from enforced thinking. These results suggest that the key challenge is not simply making agents think more, but ensuring that private reasoning and environment knowledge are externalized as timely, user-facing information disclosure.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 33 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2026.

Builds on

33 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025SpeakRL: Synergizing Reasoning, Speaking, and Acting in Language Models with Reinforcement Learning15 Dec
  2. 2023Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Model24 May

Other references · 31

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  3. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,467
  4. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,323
  5. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  6. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  7. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  8. 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,311
  9. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,280
  10. 2025gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Cardcited by 1,258
  11. 2025Monitoring Reasoning Models for Misbehavior and the Risks of Promoting Obfuscationcited by 338
  12. 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 319
19 more
  1. 2016Cooperative Inverse Reinforcement Learningcited by 298
  2. 2023MINT: Evaluating LLMs in Multi-turn Interaction with Tools and Language Feedbackcited by 293
  3. 2024ToolSandbox: A Stateful, Conversational, Interactive Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Tool Use Capabilitiescited by 272
  4. 2024To CoT or not to CoT? Chain-of-thought helps mainly on math and symbolic reasoningcited by 257
  5. 2024MT-Bench-101: A Fine-Grained Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Multi-Turn Dialoguescited by 247
  6. 2025MultiChallenge: A Realistic Multi-Turn Conversation Evaluation Benchmark Challenging to Frontier LLMscited by 171
  7. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
  8. 2023Clarify When Necessary: Resolving Ambiguity Through Interaction with LMscited by 93
  9. 2024Tell Me More! Towards Implicit User Intention Understanding of Language Model Driven Agentscited by 71
  10. 2025UserBench: An Interactive Gym Environment for User-Centric Agentscited by 69
  11. 2025Does Thinking More always Help? Mirage of Test-Time Scaling in Reasoning Modelscited by 52
  12. 2024Complementarity in Human-AI Collaboration: Concept, Sources, and Evidencecited by 35
  13. 2025Structured Uncertainty guided Clarification for LLM Agentscited by 34
  14. 2023Decision-Oriented Dialogue for Human-AI Collaborationcited by 29
  15. 2024LLMs in the Imaginarium: Tool Learning through Simulated Trial and Errorcited by 19
  16. 2025The Reasoning Trap: How Enhancing LLM Reasoning Amplifies Tool Hallucinationcited by 12
  17. 2025ClarifyMT-Bench: Benchmarking and Improving Multi-Turn Clarification for Conversational Large Language Modelscited by 12
  18. 2022One Agent To Rule Them All: Towards Multi-agent Conversational AIcited by 11
  19. 2025Does Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Help Mobile GUI Agent? An Empirical Studycited by 11

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