mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

S-Agent: Spatial Tool-Use Elicits Reasoning for Spatial Intelligence

arXiv 2606.20515 ↗First posted 18 Jun 2026cs.CVcited by 11

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Real-world spatial intelligence requires reasoning over a continuous and evolving 3D world, yet existing VLMs and tool-augmented agents largely remain tied to static, stateless inference from isolated visual observations. We introduce textbftextscS-Agent, a spatial tool-use agentic paradigm for understanding and reasoning over continuous multi-view images and videos. By formulating spatial reasoning as spatio-temporal evidence accumulation rather than isolated frame-level prediction, textscS-Agent reshapes spatial perception into scene-centric understanding beyond frame-centric recognition. Specifically, textscS-Agent casts the VLM as a semantic planner that decides what evidence is needed, while a hierarchy of spatial tools and experts grounds objects in 2D, lifts them into 3D geometric evidence, and aggregates this evidence into high-level spatial knowledge (textite.g., counting, measurement, orientation, and relative position). Additionally, a temporal memory mechanism, including Scene Memory for maintaining the evolving scene state and Agent Memory for accumulating reasoning context, enables evidence integration across frames and reasoning steps. Comprehensive experiments on multi-view and video spatial reasoning benchmarks show that textscS-Agent consistently improves both open-source and closed-source VLMs in a training-free manner. Beyond inference-time augmentation, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on textscS-Agent-generated spatial trajectories textscS-300K yields textscS-Agent-8B, a compact spatial agent that significantly surpasses similar-scale baselines (e.g., Qwen3-VL-8B) and performs comparably to advanced closed-source models (e.g., GPT-5.4 and Gemini 3).

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 29 of its 33 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Jun 2026.

Builds on

29 of 33 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Geometrically-Constrained Agent for Spatial Reasoning27 Nov
  2. 2025Visual Agentic AI for Spatial Reasoning with a Dynamic API10 Feb

Other references · 27

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  3. 2019nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous drivingcited by 4,523
  4. 2025VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformercited by 1,539
  5. 2023Video-LLaMA: An Instruction-tuned Audio-Visual Language Model for Video Understandingcited by 1,471
  6. 2024LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Modelscited by 1,464
  7. 2025Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Viewscited by 692
  8. 2023Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Modelscited by 668
  9. 2024Thinking in Space: How Multimodal Large Language Models See, Remember, and Recall Spacescited by 611
  10. 2023ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoningcited by 603
  11. 2024BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceivecited by 550
  12. 2023MM-REACT: Prompting ChatGPT for Multimodal Reasoning and Actioncited by 517
15 more
  1. 2024Long Context Transfer from Language to Visioncited by 515
  2. 2025Spatial-MLLM: Boosting MLLM Capabilities in Visual-based Spatial Intelligencecited by 217
  3. 2025MMSI-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Image Spatial Intelligencecited by 183
  4. 2025SpaceR: Reinforcing MLLMs in Video Spatial Reasoningcited by 159
  5. 20243DSRBench: A Comprehensive 3D Spatial Reasoning Benchmarkcited by 139
  6. 2025Reinforcing Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models with Interwoven Thinking and Visual Drawingcited by 136
  7. 2025Cambrian-S: Towards Spatial Supersensing in Videocited by 134
  8. 2025ViewSpatial-Bench: Evaluating Multi-perspective Spatial Localization in Vision-Language Modelscited by 118
  9. 2025MindCube: Spatial Mental Modeling from Limited Viewscited by 95
  10. 2025T*: Re-thinking Temporal Search for Long-Form Video Understandingcited by 82
  11. 2025Benchmark Designers Should "Train on the Test Set" to Expose Exploitable Non-Visual Shortcutscited by 29
  12. 2026Think3D: Thinking with Space for Spatial Reasoningcited by 24
  13. 2025SpaceTools: Tool-Augmented Spatial Reasoning via Double Interactive RLcited by 21
  14. 2026ReVSI: Rebuilding Visual Spatial Intelligence Evaluation for Accurate Assessment of VLM 3D Reasoningcited by 15
  15. 2025Solving Spatial Supersensing Without Spatial Supersensingcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.

11 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Skill-3D: Evolving Scene-Aware Skills for Agentic 3D Spatial Reasoning
  2. 2026Perceive, Interact, Reason: Building Tool-Augmented Visual Agents for Spatial Reasoning
  3. 2026SpatialClaw: Rethinking Action Interface for Agentic Spatial Reasoning
  4. 2026SpatiO: Adaptive Test-Time Orchestration of Vision-Language Agents for Spatial Reasoning
  5. 2026From Perception to Action: Spatial AI Agents and World Models
  6. 2025Reasoning Path and Latent State Analysis for Multi-view Visual Spatial Reasoning: A Cognitive Science Perspective
  7. 2026SpatialAct: Probing Spatial Reasoning-to-Action Capabilities of VLM Agents in 3D Scenes
  8. 2026DeSpatial: The devil of Agentic Spatial Reasoning Lies in 3D Itself