mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

λA: A Typed Lambda Calculus for LLM Agent Composition

arXiv 2604.11767 ↗First posted 13 Apr 2026cs.PL cs.MA cs.SEcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Existing LLM agent frameworks lack formal semantics: there is no principled way to determine whether an agent configuration is well-formed or will terminate. We present λA, a typed lambda calculus for agent composition that extends the simply-typed lambda calculus with oracle calls, bounded fixpoints (the ReAct loop), probabilistic choice, and mutable environments. We prove type safety, termination of bounded fixpoints, and soundness of derived lint rules, with full Coq mechanization (1,519 lines, 42 theorems, 0 Admitted). As a practical application, we derive a lint tool that detects structural configuration errors directly from the operational semantics. An evaluation on 835 real-world GitHub agent configurations shows that 94.1% are structurally incomplete under λA, with YAML-only lint precision at 54%, rising to 96--100% under joint YAML+Python AST analysis on 175 samples. This gap quantifies, for the first time, the degree of semantic entanglement between declarative configuration and imperative code in the agent ecosystem. We further show that five mainstream paradigms (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenAI SDK, Dify) embed as typed λA fragments, establishing λA as a unifying calculus for LLM agent composition.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper 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 5 of its 25 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2026.

Builds on

5 of 25 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Agentics 2.0: Logical Transduction Algebra for Agentic Data Workflows4 Mar
  2. 2025Agint: Agentic Graph Compilation for Software Engineering Agents24 Nov

Other references · 3

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  2. 2018Pyro: Deep Universal Probabilistic Programmingcited by 380
  3. 2021Getting to the Point. Index Sets and Parallelism-Preserving Autodiff for Pointful Array Programmingcited by 10

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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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