AgentVista: Evaluating Multimodal Agents in Ultra-Challenging Realistic Visual Scenarios
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Abstract (arXiv)
Real-world multimodal agents solve multi-step workflows grounded in visual evidence. For example, an agent can troubleshoot a device by linking a wiring photo to a schematic and validating the fix with online documentation, or plan a trip by interpreting a transit map and checking schedules under routing constraints. However, existing multimodal benchmarks mainly evaluate single-turn visual reasoning or specific tool skills, and they do not fully capture the realism, visual subtlety, and long-horizon tool use that practical agents require. We introduce AgentVista, a benchmark for generalist multimodal agents that spans 25 sub-domains across 7 categories, pairing realistic and detail-rich visual scenarios with natural hybrid tool use. Tasks require long-horizon tool interactions across modalities, including web search, image search, page navigation, and code-based operations for both image processing and general programming. Comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art models exposes significant gaps in their ability to carry out long-horizon multimodal tool use. Even the best model in our evaluation, Gemini-3-Pro with tools, achieves only 27.3% overall accuracy, and hard instances can require more than 25 tool-calling turns. We expect AgentVista to accelerate the development of more capable and reliable multimodal agents for realistic and ultra-challenging problem solving.
Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2026.
Builds on
31 of 40 references.
References · 31
- 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,869
- 2023BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Modelscited by 6,137
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
- 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,793
- 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,711
- 2015VQA: Visual Question Answeringcited by 2,506
- 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
- 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,080
- 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,614
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,195
- 2023Kosmos-2: Grounding Multimodal Large Language Models to the Worldcited by 1,089
- 2025BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agentscited by 647
19 more
- 2026Kimi K2.5: Visual Agentic Intelligencecited by 501
- 2023V*: Guided Visual Search as a Core Mechanism in Multimodal LLMscited by 482
- 2025DeepEyes: Incentivizing "Thinking with Images" via Reinforcement Learningcited by 410
- 2024CharXiv: Charting Gaps in Realistic Chart Understanding in Multimodal LLMscited by 234
- 2024SWE-bench Multimodal: Do AI Systems Generalize to Visual Software Domains?cited by 203
- 2025Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontierscited by 199
- 2025OpenThinkIMG: Learning to Think with Images via Visual Tool Reinforcement Learningcited by 163
- 2025DeepEyesV2: Toward Agentic Multimodal Modelcited by 125
- 2025Mini-o3: Scaling Up Reasoning Patterns and Interaction Turns for Visual Searchcited by 120
- 2025WebWatcher: Breaking New Frontier of Vision-Language Deep Research Agentcited by 119
- 2025The Tool Decathlon: Benchmarking Language Agents for Diverse, Realistic, and Long-Horizon Task Executioncited by 85
- 2024WildVision: Evaluating Vision-Language Models in the Wild with Human Preferencescited by 76
- 2024m&m's: A Benchmark to Evaluate Tool-Use for multi-step multi-modal Taskscited by 38
- 2025MMSearch-Plus: Benchmarking Provenance-Aware Search for Multimodal Browsing Agentscited by 38
- 2025TIR-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Agentic Thinking-with-Images Reasoningcited by 36
- 2025Beyond Seeing: Evaluating Multimodal LLMs on Tool-Enabled Image Perception, Transformation, and Reasoningcited by 29
- 2024VisionArena: 230K Real World User-VLM Conversations with Preference Labelscited by 22
- 2025Agent-X: Evaluating Deep Multimodal Reasoning in Vision-Centric Agentic Taskscited by 19
- 2025MindWatcher: Toward Smarter Multimodal Tool-Integrated Reasoningcited by 6
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 23.
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- 2026DeepSearch-World: Self-Distillation for Deep Search Agents in a Verifiable Environment8 Jul 2026
- 2026Multi-Modal Agents for Power Distribution Defect Detection: An Evaluation of Foundation Models11 Jun 2026
- 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Application10 Jun 2026
- 2026Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarks9 Jun 2026
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revision31 May 2026
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- 2026Towards On-Policy Data Evolution for Visual-Native Multimodal Deep Search Agents11 May 2026
- 2026Seek-and-Solve: Benchmarking MLLMs for Visual Clue-Driven Reasoning in Daily Scenarios15 Apr 2026
- 2026Self-Evolving Code-with-Image Reasoningcited by 2
- 2026Self-Evolving Code-with-Image Reasoning11 Aug 2026
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- 2026Do Multimodal Agents Really Benefit from Tool Use? A Systematic Study of Capability Gainscited by 4
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- 2026Learning to Learn from Multimodal Experiencecited by 1
- 2026SciDocBench: A Workflow-Centered Benchmark and Data Pipeline for Scientific Document Understandingcited by 1
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