# Just A Rather Very Intelligent Spoken Agent

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.16610 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16610/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 12 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12045/) (2024)
- [gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10925/) (2025)
- [OpenAI GPT-5 System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03267/) (2025)
- [Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02716/) (2024)
- [TheAgentCompany: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Consequential Real World Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14161/) (2024)
- [WildClawBench: A Benchmark for Real-World, Long-Horizon Agent Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10912/) (2026)
- [τ-Voice: Benchmarking Full-Duplex Voice Agents on Real-World Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13686/) (2026)
- [HiL-Bench (Human-in-Loop Benchmark): Do Agents Know When to Ask for Help?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09408/) (2026)
- [EVA-Bench: A New End-to-end Framework for Evaluating Voice Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13841/) (2026)
- [Beyond Reactivity: Measuring Proactive Problem Solving in LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19771/) (2025)
- [SoulX-Duplug: Plug-and-Play Streaming State Prediction Module for Realtime Full-Duplex Speech Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14877/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Long-horizon AI agents are becoming increasingly capable, yet their interaction with users remains surprisingly thin. In most workflows, users give an initial instruction, receive only selective textual updates, and lose a clear sense of what the agent is doing or when to step in. This leaves a missing part in the current agent ecosystem: an always-on Jarvis-style mediator that keeps the agent continuously reachable to the user. Such a mediator should support real-time spoken interaction with the user, answer questions without interrupting the worker, proactively report progress or confusion, and inject user guidance back into the agent's execution when useful. In this work, we introduce JarvisBench, a benchmark for measuring the dual value of mediation in long-horizon agent workflows. JarvisBench contains two complementary tracks: an agent-collaboration track that measures whether mediation improves downstream task completion, and a user-interaction track that measures whether mediation makes ongoing execution more understandable, responsive, and accessible to users. We instantiate the benchmark with a modular reference Jarvis prototype and evaluate it on 34 text-only WildClaw tasks executed in OpenClaw. Preliminary results with GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.7, Gemini-based, and GPT-based worker agents suggest that Jarvis-style mediation can provide trace-grounded responses to user questions and improve task performance when sparse user guidance is injected at appropriate moments. The results also show that effectiveness depends strongly on the mediator's LLM brain, highlighting both the promise of this missing middle layer and the need for broader community effort. Demo page https://cchen1436.github.io/jarvis