# X-SYS: A Reference Architecture for Interactive Explanation Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12748 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12748/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 92 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [Pre-train, Prompt, and Predict: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Methods in Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13586/) (2021)
- [Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08608/) (2017)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [A Survey Of Methods For Explaining Black Box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01933/) (2018)
- [Steering Language Models With Activation Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10248/) (2023)
- [Network Dissection: Quantifying Interpretability of Deep Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05796/) (2017)
- [Captum: A unified and generic model interpretability library for PyTorch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07896/) (2020)
- [Closing the AI Accountability Gap: Defining an End-to-End Framework for Internal Algorithmic Auditing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00973/) (2020)
- [Unmasking Clever Hans Predictors and Assessing What Machines Really Learn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10178/) (2019)
- [European Union regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a "right to explanation"](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08813/) (2016)
- [Opportunities and Challenges in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11371/) (2020)
- [Questioning the AI: Informing Design Practices for Explainable AI User Experiences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02478/) (2020)
- [Explainable Machine Learning in Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06342/) (2019)
- [Qualitatively characterizing neural network optimization problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6544/) (2014)
- [Quantus: An Explainable AI Toolkit for Responsible Evaluation of Neural Network Explanations and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06861/) (2022)
- [From Attribution Maps to Human-Understandable Explanations through Concept Relevance Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03208/) (2022)
- [What Do We Want From Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)? -- A Stakeholder Perspective on XAI and a Conceptual Model Guiding Interdisciplinary XAI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07817/) (2021)
- [Principles and Practice of Explainable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11698/) (2020)
- [MobileCLIP: Fast Image-Text Models through Multi-Modal Reinforced Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17049/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Saliency Map Explanations for Convolutional Neural Networks: A User Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00772/) (2020)
- [Software for Dataset-wide XAI: From Local Explanations to Global Insights with Zennit, CoRelAy, and ViRelAy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13200/) (2021)
- [Charting the Sociotechnical Gap in Explainable AI: A Framework to Address the Gap in XAI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00799/) (2023)
- [Mechanistic understanding and validation of large AI models with SemanticLens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05398/) (2025)
- [Software Architecture for ML-based Systems: What Exists and What Lies Ahead](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07950/) (2021)
- [How to choose an Explainability Method? Towards a Methodical Implementation of XAI in Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04427/) (2021)
- [Identifying Explanation Needs of End-users: Applying and Extending the XAI Question Bank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09369/) (2023)
- [Incremental XAI: Memorable Understanding of AI with Incremental Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06733/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The explainable AI (XAI) research community has proposed numerous technical methods, yet deploying explainability as systems remains challenging: Interactive explanation systems require both suitable algorithms and system capabilities that maintain explanation usability across repeated queries, evolving models and data, and governance constraints. We argue that operationalizing XAI requires treating explainability as an information systems problem where user interaction demands induce specific system requirements. We introduce X-SYS, a reference architecture for interactive explanation systems, that guides (X)AI researchers, developers and practitioners in connecting interactive explanation user interfaces (XUI) with system capabilities. X-SYS organizes around four quality attributes named STAR (scalability, traceability, responsiveness, and adaptability), and specifies a five-component decomposition (XUI Services, Explanation Services, Model Services, Data Services, Orchestration and Governance). It maps interaction patterns to system capabilities to decouple user interface evolution from backend computation. We implement X-SYS through SemanticLens, a system for semantic search and activation steering in vision-language models. SemanticLens demonstrates how contract-based service boundaries enable independent evolution, offline/online separation ensures responsiveness, and persistent state management supports traceability. Together, this work provides a reusable blueprint and concrete instantiation for interactive explanation systems supporting end-to-end design under operational constraints.