GenOS: Compositional Certificates for Semantic Robustness in AI Code Generation
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents
Abstract (arXiv)
AI coding agents are stochastic workflows: prompts are interpreted, artifacts are sampled, validators produce observations, and orchestrators commit or repair. Small prompt or specification changes can therefore alter program-behavior distributions even when the texts appear synonymous. Existing systems evaluate correctness, but lack a compositional criterion for safely replacing a prompt, contract, generator, or program inside a complete agentic workflow. We introduce GenOS, a probabilistic operational semantics for this replacement problem. Each layer is modeled as a Markov kernel, and each interface carries an observer-relative equivalence. We prove that equivalence-compatible kernels descend to quotient classes and that quotienting commutes with distributional extension and sequential composition. Hence, equivalent prompts induce equal probabilities for all downstream equivalence-closed events, including verified commit. We also establish workflow bisimulation, guarded-commit safety under sound validation, total-variation non-expansiveness, and an additive robustness bound that attributes approximation error to individual pipeline layers. An executable insertion-sort audit instantiates the theory with natural-language paraphrases, a formal contract, six programs, two observers, and exhaustive execution on 121 inputs. Equivalent prompts yield identical code-class and commit distributions; a prompt assigning 5% probability to an in-place contract is distinguished by a mutation observer, while downstream distances remain within the predicted bound. Across 20,000 randomized finite-kernel trials, no exact or approximate law is violated. GenOS is model-parametric: compatibility is a measurable property to test, not an assumption about language-model behavior.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 8 of its 17 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Aug 2026.
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8 of 17 references.
References · 8
- 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
- 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,509
- 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,332
- 2022Prompting Is Programming: A Query Language for Large Language Modelscited by 110
- 2021Jigsaw: Large Language Models meet Program Synthesiscited by 103
- 2023Clover: Closed-Loop Verifiable Code Generationcited by 62
- 2024Enchanting Program Specification Synthesis by Large Language Models using Static Analysis and Program Verificationcited by 55
- 2024VeCoGen: Automating Generation of Formally Verified C Code with Large Language Modelscited by 10
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