Latent Cache Flow: Model-to-Model Communication Without Text
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
LLM agents today communicate via text, which incurs considerable latency and information loss due to the need to autoregressively decode the sharer model's state and encode at the receiver model. Recent work such as Cache-to-Cache (C2C; Fu et al., 2026) seeks to exchange KV caches by learning adapters that translate sharer KV matrices to the receiver model. However, the adapters are large and expensive to train, and translate individual tokens, which requires the target context to be identical. This is unsuitable for agent communication, where the LLMs have differing context. We introduce Latent Cache Flow (LCF). To address efficiency, we observe that keys and values can be jointly translated and compressed, reducing the adapter to about 4% of C2C's size. To address differing context, we design the adapter to transmit a summary of new information that the target model does not have. Our early experiments show that a pruned 13 MB LCF adapter can be more accurate than C2C at 956 MB in shared-context settings; for different contexts, LCF improves F1 by 7.5% and Exact Match by 23% while 8.5 times faster than text-based communication.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers 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 10 of its 15 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 May 2026.
Builds on
10 of 15 references.
References · 10
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2018Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 4,710
- 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
- 2018Can a Suit of Armor Conduct Electricity? A New Dataset for Open Book Question Answeringcited by 2,114
- 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,739
- 2024DeepSeek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Modelcited by 1,093
- 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 580
- 2025Cache-to-Cache: Direct Semantic Communication Between Large Language Modelscited by 54
- 2025Transferring Linear Features Across Language Models With Model Stitchingcited by 17
- 2026Latent Space Communication via K-V Cache Alignmentcited by 9
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.
6 papers.
- 2026KV Cache Translation across Heterogeneous Large Language Modelscited by 4
- 2026KV-Skill: Forging Expertise in the Model's Native Languagecited by 3
- 2026CacheBridge: Efficient Cross-Model KV Cache Transfercited by 2
- 2026Dual-Cache Latent Space Communication between Heterogeneous Language Modelscited by 1
- 2026LatentPort: Beyond KV Cache - Cross-Model Transfer of Recurrent Memory in Hybrid Language Models: A 4B-to-9B Hybrid-State Handoff Without Target Prefix Replaycited by 0
- 2026Receiver-Conditioned Latent Communication gives 94% CacheBackcited by 0
- 2026Receiver-Conditioned Latent Communication gives 94% CacheBack25 Sep 2026
- 2026LatentPort: Beyond KV Cache - Cross-Model Transfer of Recurrent Memory in Hybrid Language Models: A 4B-to-9B Hybrid-State Handoff Without Target Prefix Replay7 Sep 2026
- 2026CacheBridge: Efficient Cross-Model KV Cache Transfer1 Sep 2026
- 2026Dual-Cache Latent Space Communication between Heterogeneous Language Models20 Aug 2026
- 2026KV-Skill: Forging Expertise in the Model's Native Language5 Aug 2026
- 2026KV Cache Translation across Heterogeneous Large Language Models31 Jul 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Prefill-Free Cross-Family KV Cache Transfer for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent LLMs
- 2025KVCOMM: Online Cross-context KV-cache Communication for Efficient LLM-based Multi-agent Systems
- 2026LCGuard: Latent Communication Guard for Safe KV Sharing in Multi-Agent Systems
- 2026RelayCaching: Accelerating LLM Collaboration via Decoding KV Cache Reuse
- 2026MemDecay: Region-Aware KV Cache Eviction for Efficient LLM Agent Inference
- 2026PolyKV: A Shared Asymmetrically-Compressed KV Cache Pool for Multi-Agent LLM Inference
- 2026Beyond tokens: a unified framework for latent communication in LLM-based multi-agent systems
- 2026KVCMAS: Efficient KV cache Correction for Shared Context in Multi-Agent Systems