# MTA-Agent: An Open Recipe for Multimodal Deep Search Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06376 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06376/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Document understanding and multimodal RAG, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 29 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Document understanding and multimodal RAG](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/document-understanding-and-multimodal-rag/)
- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [OK-VQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Requiring External Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00067/) (2019)
- [OpenAI GPT-5 System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03267/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02556/) (2025)
- [Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06749/) (2025)
- [InfographicVQA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12756/) (2021)
- [Search-o1: Agentic Search-Enhanced Large Reasoning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05366/) (2025)
- [R1-Searcher: Incentivizing the Search Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05592/) (2025)
- [VisRAG: Vision-based Retrieval-augmented Generation on Multi-modality Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10594/) (2024)
- [Can Pre-trained Vision and Language Models Answer Visual Information-Seeking Questions?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11713/) (2023)
- [MMT-Bench: A Comprehensive Multimodal Benchmark for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models Towards Multitask AGI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16006/) (2024)
- [OWL: Optimized Workforce Learning for General Multi-Agent Assistance in Real-World Task Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23885/) (2025)
- [MMSearch-R1: Incentivizing LMMs to Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20670/) (2025)
- [WebShaper: Agentically Data Synthesizing via Information-Seeking Formalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15061/) (2025)
- [WebWatcher: Breaking New Frontier of Vision-Language Deep Research Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05748/) (2025)
- [MMSearch: Benchmarking the Potential of Large Models as Multi-modal Search Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12959/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation with Dynamic VQA Dataset and Self-adaptive Planning Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02937/) (2024)
- [MLLM Is a Strong Reranker: Advancing Multimodal Retrieval-augmented Generation via Knowledge-enhanced Reranking and Noise-injected Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21439/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Deep Research: Systems, Methodologies, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12594/) (2025)
- [DeepMMSearch-R1: Empowering Multimodal LLMs in Multimodal Web Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12801/) (2025)
- [MMSearch-Plus: Benchmarking Provenance-Aware Search for Multimodal Browsing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21475/) (2025)
- [Vision-DeepResearch Benchmark: Rethinking Visual and Textual Search for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02185/) (2026)
- [SenseNova-MARS: Empowering Multimodal Agentic Reasoning and Search via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24330/) (2025)
- [Seeking and Updating with Live Visual Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05288/) (2025)
- [MMDeepResearch-Bench: A Benchmark for Multimodal Deep Research Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12346/) (2026)
- [MM-DeepResearch: A Simple and Effective Multimodal Agentic Search Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01050/) (2026)
- [DeepResearch-9K: A Challenging Benchmark Dataset of Deep-Research Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01152/) (2026)
- [Detecting Knowledge Boundary of Vision Large Language Models by Sampling-Based Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18023/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [TRACER: Verifiable Generative Provenance for Multimodal Tool-Using Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09934/) (2026)
- [VistaHop: Benchmarking Long-Horizon Visual DeepSearch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03273/) (2026)
- [TAPO: Tool-Aware Policy Optimization via Credit Transfer for Multimodal Search Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05784/) (2026)
- [SimpleSearch-VL: A Simple Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Deep Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31504/) (2026)
- [VaseMuseum: Digital Intelligent Museum for Ancient Greek Pottery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06374/) (2026)
- [Memory-Conditioned Tool Calling for Camera-First Visual Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09822/) (2026)
- [VisDocAgentBench: Benchmarking Agents for Visually Rich Document Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17889/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in visual understanding, yet they remain limited in complex, multi-step reasoning that requires deep searching and integrating visual evidence with external knowledge. In this work, we address this challenge by constructing high-quality, verified multi-hop vision-language training data for multimodal deep-search agents. We propose a Multi-hop Tool-Augmented Agent for Evidence-based QA Synthesis (MTA-Agent), which automatically selects tools and their parameters to retrieve and validate evidence from both visual and textual sources and generates structured multi-hop question-answer trajectories. Starting from diverse VQA seed datasets, our pipeline produces a large-scale training dataset, MTA-Vision-DeepSearch, containing 21K high-quality multi-hop examples. The data is filtered through a multi-stage verification process to ensure factual consistency and answer uniqueness. Using MTA-Vision-DeepSearch, a 32B open-source multimodal search agent achieves state-of-the-art performance, reaching an average of 54.63% across six challenging benchmarks, outperforming GPT-5 (51.86%), Gemini-2.5-Pro (50.98%), and Gemini-3-Pro (54.46%) under the same tool settings. We further show that training on our data improves both reasoning depth and tool-use behavior, increasing the average number of steps from 2.27 to 4.28, and leading to more systematic and persistent search strategies. Additionally, we demonstrate that training can be performed without real-time tool calls by replaying cached interactions, significantly reducing training cost. Importantly, we present MTA-Agent as a fully open recipe for multimodal deep search: we release the entire dataset, training trajectories, and implementation details to enable reproducibility and future research on open multimodal search agents.