mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Breaking, Stale, or Missing? Benchmarking Coding Agents on Project-Level Test Evolution

arXiv 2605.06125 ↗First posted 7 May 2026cs.SEcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

As production code evolves, the test suite must co-evolve to remain effective. Existing benchmarks for test evolution operate at method-level granularity with pre-paired inputs, bypassing the task of locating affected tests from the full project and excluding the need for new tests entirely. We present TEBench, the first project-level benchmark for test evolution. Given a project repository and a code-changing commit, TEBench requires systems to autonomously identify tests requiring modification, determine where new tests are needed, and produce the corresponding test patch. We construct TEBench through a four-stage pipeline over Defects4J projects, curating 314 task instances from 10 projects with developer-written ground truth. Each instance is annotated with one or more of three evolution types: Test-Breaking (tests that fail), Test-Stale (tests that pass but no longer meaningfully validate updated behavior), and Test-Missing (new tests needed for introduced behavior). We evaluate seven configurations spanning three industrial agent frameworks (Claude Code, Codex CLI, OpenCode) and six base models, alongside a heuristic baseline. All seven configurations converge on an identification F1 of 45.7% to 49.4%, revealing a shared performance ceiling across both frameworks and base models. Test-Stale is the most challenging type, averaging F1 around 36%, since configurations rely on execution failure signals and lack proactive semantic reasoning. On the update task, configurations produce highly executable test modifications whose surface form diverges substantially from ground truth. Trajectory analysis reveals a reactive "execute-fail-fix" loop that succeeds for breaking tests but structurally cannot address stale or missing tests. TEBench is available at https://github.com/iSEngLab/TEBench with a leaderboard at https://tebench-leadership.vercel.app.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 23 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 May 2026.

Builds on

23 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026GLM-5: from Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering17 Feb
  2. 2025SWE-EVO: Benchmarking Coding Agents in Long-Horizon Software Evolution Scenarios20 Dec
  3. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents23 Jul
  4. 2024SWT-Bench: Testing and Validating Real-World Bug-Fixes with Code Agents18 Jun
  5. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering6 May

Other references · 18

  1. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  2. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  3. 2025DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Modelscited by 755
  4. 2025SWE-Bench Pro: Can AI Agents Solve Long-Horizon Software Engineering Tasks?cited by 254
  5. 2023An Empirical Evaluation of Using Large Language Models for Automated Unit Test Generationcited by 193
  6. 2023ChatUniTest: A Framework for LLM-Based Test Generationcited by 94
  7. 2024Code-Aware Prompting: A study of Coverage Guided Test Generation in Regression Setting using LLMcited by 63
  8. 2022Pynguin: Automated Unit Test Generation for Pythoncited by 49
  9. 2024TestGenEval: A Real World Unit Test Generation and Test Completion Benchmarkcited by 49
  10. 2024HITS: High-coverage LLM-based Unit Test Generation via Method Slicingcited by 37
  11. 2024CoverUp: Effective High Coverage Test Generation for Pythoncited by 36
  12. 2024TDD-Bench Verified: Can LLMs Generate Tests for Issues Before They Get Resolved?cited by 32
6 more
  1. 2024ASTER: Natural and Multi-language Unit Test Generation with LLMscited by 9
  2. 2024REACCEPT: Automated Co-evolution of Production and Test Code Based on Dynamic Validation and Large Language Modelscited by 5
  3. 2024Automated Test Case Repair Using Language Modelscited by 4
  4. 2024Fix the Tests: Augmenting LLMs to Repair Test Cases with Static Collector and Neural Rerankercited by 4
  5. 2025UTFix: Change Aware Unit Test Repairing using LLMcited by 3
  6. 2025Unit Test Update through LLM-Driven Context Collection and Error-Type-Aware Refinementcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026TestJack: Should you trust the results in coding benchmarks? Agentic Coding Benchmarks Auditing via Evaluator Evolution
  2. 2026Self-Evolving Coding Agents
  3. 2026Beyond Isolated Tasks: A Framework for Evaluating Coding Agents on Sequential Software Evolution
  4. 2026Test-Driven Approaches to Software Engineering with Large Language Models: A Survey of Phases, Tasks, and Agent Skills
  5. 2025TENET: One Step Toward Test-Driven Development for Repository-Level Code Generation
  6. 2026SWE Refactor Bench: Can Coding Agents Complete a Long-Horizon, Whole-Repository Stack Migration?
  7. 2026TTHE: Test-Time Harness Evolution
  8. 2026EvoCode-Bench: Evaluating Coding Agents in Multi-Turn Iterative Interactions