# SHERLOC: Structured Diagnostic Localization for Code Repair Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.24820 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24820/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 22 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Software engineering coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/software-engineering-coding-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10925/) (2025)
- [SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07104/) (2023)
- [Training Software Engineering Agents and Verifiers with SWE-Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.21139/) (2024)
- [AutoCodeRover: Autonomous Program Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05427/) (2024)
- [SWE-bench Multimodal: Do AI Systems Generalize to Visual Software Domains?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03859/) (2024)
- [LocAgent: Graph-Guided LLM Agents for Code Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09089/) (2025)
- [SWE-Debate: Competitive Multi-Agent Debate for Software Issue Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23348/) (2025)
- [A Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of LLM-Based Explainable Fault Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05487/) (2023)
- [The SWE-Bench Illusion: When State-of-the-Art LLMs Remember Instead of Reason](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12286/) (2025)
- [OrcaLoca: An LLM Agent Framework for Software Issue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00350/) (2025)
- [CoRNStack: High-Quality Contrastive Data for Better Code Retrieval and Reranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01007/) (2024)
- [Issue Localization via LLM-Driven Iterative Code Graph Searching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22424/) (2025)
- [Thought calibration: Efficient and confident test-time scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18404/) (2025)
- [SweRank: Software Issue Localization with Code Ranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07849/) (2025)
- [Tool-integrated Reinforcement Learning for Repo Deep Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03012/) (2025)
- [T2: An Adaptive Test-Time Scaling Strategy for Contextual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17427/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Harness Handbook: Making Evolving Agent Harnesses Readable,Navigable, and Editable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13285/) (2026)
- [Does Fault Localization Beat a Fresh Attempt? A Placebo-Controlled Study of Test-Guided Code Repair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00854/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

LLM agents solve repository-level coding tasks through multi-turn tool use, but utilize half their budget on locating faults before editing. Dedicated localization frameworks have emerged, yet are still evaluated as file retrieval rather than actionable diagnosis, producing locations without the diagnostic context a repair agent needs. We introduce SHERLOC (Structured Hypothesis-driven Exploration and Reasoning for Localization), a training-free framework pairing a reasoning LLM with compact repository tools and self-recovery, without fine-tuning or multi-agent orchestration. SHERLOC reaches state-of-the-art localization across model scales: 84.33% accuracy@1 on SWE-Bench Lite and 81.27% recall@1 on SWE-Bench Verified; at ~30B parameters, it matches or outperforms other agentic methods. Injecting our locations and diagnostic findings into repair agents yields an average +5.95 pp resolve-rate gain from the best SHERLOC result per setting on SWE-Bench Verified. SHERLOC cuts localization and total tokens by 36.7% and 23.1% on average.