# AgentConductor: Topology Evolution for Multi-Agent Competition-Level Code Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17100 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17100/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 26 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19256/) (2024)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00352/) (2023)
- [LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13372/) (2024)
- [Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07814/) (2022)
- [Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09516/) (2025)
- [When Not to Trust Language Models: Investigating Effectiveness of Parametric and Non-Parametric Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10511/) (2022)
- [GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12983/) (2023)
- [Measuring Coding Challenge Competence With APPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09938/) (2021)
- [Humanity's Last Exam](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14249/) (2025)
- [AFlow: Automating Agentic Workflow Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10762/) (2024)
- [RAGEN: Understanding Self-Evolution in LLM Agents via Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20073/) (2025)
- [Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07155/) (2024)
- [Multi-agent Architecture Search via Agentic Supernet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04180/) (2025)
- [MapCoder: Multi-Agent Code Generation for Competitive Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11403/) (2024)
- [Cut the Crap: An Economical Communication Pipeline for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02506/) (2024)
- [Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19591/) (2025)
- [Self-Organized Agents: A LLM Multi-Agent Framework toward Ultra Large-Scale Code Generation and Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02183/) (2024)
- [Chain-of-Agents: End-to-End Agent Foundation Models via Multi-Agent Distillation and Agentic RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13167/) (2025)
- [FlowReasoner: Reinforcing Query-Level Meta-Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15257/) (2025)
- [AutoSafeCoder: A Multi-Agent Framework for Securing LLM Code Generation through Static Analysis and Fuzz Testing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10737/) (2024)
- [CODESIM: Multi-Agent Code Generation and Problem Solving through Simulation-Driven Planning and Debugging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05664/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [From Static Templates to Dynamic Runtime Graphs: A Survey of Workflow Optimization for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22386/) (2026)
- [CoRe-Code: Collaborative Reinforcement Learning for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24812/) (2026)
- [Self-Evolving Agents as Dynamic Graph Transformation: A Survey and New Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18104/) (2026)
- [Experience as a Compass: Multi-agent RAG with Evolving Orchestration and Agent Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00901/) (2026)
- [Self-Evolving Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03392/) (2026)
- [Feedback Over Form: Why Execution Feedback Matters More Than Pipeline Topology in 1-3B Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21950/) (2026)
- [Retrieval-Conditioned Topology Selection with Provable Budget Conservation for Multi-Agent Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05657/) (2026)
- [COMPAS: Difficulty-Aware Joint Search for Optimizing Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04336/) (2026)
- [RepoMAS: Solving Progressively Specified Tasks with Issue-Driven Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32490/) (2026)
- [CollabFlow: Recursive Self-Improvement of Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38662/) (2026)
- [Decoupled Multi-Agent Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07556/) (2026)
- [DHCG: Dynamic Construction of Hierarchical Collaboration Graphs for LLM-Based Multi-Agent Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07835/) (2026)
- [SquidAgent: Parallelize Wisely, Coordinate Efficiently](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08647/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language model(LLM)-driven multi-agent systems(MAS) coordinate specialized agents through predefined interaction topologies and have shown promise for complex tasks such as competition-level code generation. Recent studies demonstrate that carefully designed multi-agent workflows and communication graphs can significantly improve code generation performance by leveraging collaborative reasoning. However, existing methods neither adapt topology density to task difficulty nor iteratively refine the topology within an instance using execution feedback, which leads to redundant communication and performance bottlenecks. To address these issues, we propose AgentConductor: a reinforcement learning-optimized MAS with an LLM-based orchestrator agent as its core, which enables end-to-end feedback-driven dynamic generation of interaction topologies. For each query, AgentConductor infers agent roles and task difficulty, then constructs a task-adapted, density-aware layered directed acyclic graph (DAG) topology, underpinned by two key innovations. First, we design a novel topological density function that captures communication-aware mathematical characterizations of multi-agent interactions. Second, we adopt difficulty interval partitioning to avoid excessive pruning for precise topological density upper bound measurement per difficulty level and finer-grained control. Empirically, across three competition-level and two foundational code datasets, AgentConductor achieves state-of-the-art accuracy, outperforming the strongest baseline by up to 14.6% in pass@1 accuracy, 13% in density reduction, and 68% in token cost reduction.