mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

FormulaCode: Evaluating Agentic Optimization on Large Codebases

arXiv 2603.16011 ↗First posted 16 Mar 2026cs.SE cs.AI cs.CLcited by 6

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Large language model (LLM) coding agents increasingly operate at the repository level, motivating benchmarks that evaluate their ability to optimize entire codebases under realistic constraints. Existing code benchmarks largely rely on synthetic tasks, binary correctness signals, or single-objective evaluation, limiting their ability to assess holistic optimization behavior. We introduce FormulaCode, a benchmark for evaluating agentic optimization on large, real-world codebases with fine-grained, multi-objective performance metrics. FormulaCode comprises 957 performance bottlenecks mined from scientific Python repositories on GitHub, each paired with expert-authored patches and, on average, 264.6 community-maintained performance workloads per task, enabling the holistic ability of LLM agents to optimize codebases under realistic correctness and performance constraints. Our evaluations reveal that repository-scale, multi-objective optimization remains a major challenge for frontier LLM agents. Project website at: https://formula-code.github.io

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 22 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

Builds on

22 of 60 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery16 Jun
  2. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents23 Jul
  3. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering6 May
  4. 2023ML-Bench: Evaluating Large Language Models and Agents for Machine Learning Tasks on Repository-Level Code16 Nov

Other references · 18

  1. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
  2. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  3. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
  4. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
  5. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 2,004
  6. 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,391
  7. 2025gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Cardcited by 1,386
  8. 2025OpenAI GPT-5 System Cardcited by 989
  9. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 832
  10. 2026Terminal-Bench: Benchmarking Agents on Hard, Realistic Tasks in Command Line Interfacescited by 585
  11. 2024CRUXEval: A Benchmark for Code Reasoning, Understanding and Executioncited by 300
  12. 2021CodeNet: A Large-Scale AI for Code Dataset for Learning a Diversity of Coding Taskscited by 200
6 more
  1. 2025SWE-bench Goes Live!cited by 80
  2. 2024Commit0: Library Generation from Scratchcited by 52
  3. 2025SWE-Perf: Can Language Models Optimize Code Performance on Real-World Repositories?cited by 36
  4. 2025SWE-fficiency: Can Language Models Optimize Real-World Repositories on Real Workloads?cited by 21
  5. 2025COFFE: A Code Efficiency Benchmark for Code Generationcited by 20
  6. 2017Souper: A Synthesizing Superoptimizercited by 12

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024DA-Code: Agent Data Science Code Generation Benchmark for Large Language Models
  2. 2025SWE-Compass: Towards Unified Evaluation of Agentic Coding Abilities for Large Language Models
  3. 2026ISO-Bench: Can Coding Agents Optimize Real-World Inference Workloads?
  4. 2024Self-Organized Agents: A LLM Multi-Agent Framework toward Ultra Large-Scale Code Generation and Optimization
  5. 2024Large Language Model Evaluation Via Multi AI Agents: Preliminary results
  6. 2026TraceLab: Characterizing Coding Agent Workloads for LLM Serving
  7. 2025LMR-BENCH: Evaluating LLM Agent's Ability on Reproducing Language Modeling Research
  8. 2025A Self-Improving Coding Agent