# Sophrosyne: Agentic Exploration of Relational Data Systems Needs Moderation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30862 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30862/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 13 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Web, search, and research agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/web-search-and-research-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Text-to-SQL Empowered by Large Language Models: A Benchmark Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15363/) (2023)
- [Query Rewriting for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14283/) (2023)
- [CodeS: Towards Building Open-source Language Models for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16347/) (2024)
- [CHESS: Contextual Harnessing for Efficient SQL Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16755/) (2024)
- [DTS-SQL: Decomposed Text-to-SQL with Small Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01117/) (2024)
- [ReFoRCE: A Text-to-SQL Agent with Self-Refinement, Consensus Enforcement, and Column Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00675/) (2025)
- [Supporting Our AI Overlords: Redesigning Data Systems to be Agent-First](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00997/) (2025)
- [Automatic Metadata Extraction for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19988/) (2025)
- [Pneuma: Leveraging LLMs for Tabular Data Representation and Retrieval in an End-to-End System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09207/) (2025)
- [AgentSM: Semantic Memory for Agentic Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15709/) (2026)
- [ROUTE: Robust Multitask Tuning and Collaboration for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10138/) (2024)
- [Arming Data Agents with Tribal Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13521/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text2SQL agents powered by LLMs translate natural language intent into SQL by exploring the data system through tool calls before formulating the query. However, to ensure secure and scoped access, data systems construct environments with explicit API surfaces. We study and categorize these APIs exposed today as either coarse-grained or fine-grained and posit that choosing between them presents a fundamental tradeoff between cost-efficient exploration and accurate SQL generation. Most data systems expose fine-grained APIs, but this inadvertently disadvantages agents: they over-explore, incorporating irrelevant schema elements into their query formulation and produce inaccurate results. We argue that curbing over-exploration is key to the effective use of these API surfaces, and propose Sophrosyne, a data system environment that augments API responses with directives that guide the agent's exploration process. Initial results show that directives reduce over-exploration by 4.6x and boost accuracy by up to 12.4% (approx. 4 percentage points).