mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Self-Evolving Software Agents

arXiv 2604.27264 ↗First posted 29 Apr 2026cs.SE cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

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Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous agents can adapt their behaviour to changing environments, but remain bound to requirements, goals, and capabilities fixed at design time, preventing genuine software evolution. This paper introduces self-evolving software agents, combining BDI reasoning with LLMs to enable autonomous evolution of goals, reasoning, and executable code. We propose a BDI-LLM architecture in which an automated evolution module operates alongside the agent's reasoning loop, eliciting new requirements from experience and synthesizing corresponding design and code updates. A prototype evaluated in a dynamic multi-agent environment shows that agents can autonomously discover new goals and generate executable behaviours from minimal prior knowledge. The results indicate both the feasibility and current limits of LLM-driven evolution, particularly in terms of behavioural inheritance and stability.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 3 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Apr 2026.

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3 of 30 references.

References · 3

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  2. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  3. 2021On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Modelscited by 3,961

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  1. 2026Self-Evolving Coding Agents
  2. 2026Towards AGI A Pragmatic Approach Towards Self Evolving Agent
  3. 2026Software Self-Extension with SelfEvolve: an Agentic Architecture for Runtime Code Generation
  4. 2025Live-SWE-agent: Can Software Engineering Agents Self-Evolve on the Fly?
  5. 2026AgentFactory: A Self-Evolving Framework Through Executable Subagent Accumulation and Reuse
  6. 2026Rethinking Software Development as a Self-Adaptive Socio-Technical System
  7. 2026From Atomic Actions to Standard Operating Procedures: Iterative Tool Optimization for Self-Evolving LLM Agents
  8. 2026EvoAgentBench: Benchmarking Agent Self-Evolution via Ability Transfer