Competing at Every Price Point with Agentic Evolution over a Menu of LLMs
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks
Abstract (arXiv)
Consider a firm that surveys its competition for a particular agentic task and seeks to offer superior accuracy at every price point. A firm that Pareto-dominated its competitors would leave no rational customer a reason to buy elsewhere. This paper shows a path to this kind of capability by evolving multi-LLM Python agents from training pools of at most 100 examples. Given a priced menu of nine LLM endpoints; brief documentation of the task, objective, and API; a simple seed agent; and an operator-chosen per-problem cost target--usually set at an incumbent's own price--RoboPhD, an evolutionary meta-agent, evolves complete agent programs that attack the public frontiers of two semantically dissimilar tasks point by point: DS-1000 (execution-checked code generation) and PaperFindingBench (LLM-judged scientific document retrieval). On public leaderboards for each task, the evolved agents hold every Pareto-frontier slot but one, including Pareto domination of both the top-scoring and the lowest-cost competing points.
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 29 of its 38 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Aug 2026.
Builds on
29 of 38 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2026RoboPhD: Evolving Diverse Complex Agents Under Tight Evaluation Budgets6 Apr
- 2025BAMAS: Structuring Budget-Aware Multi-Agent Systems26 Nov
- 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agents29 May
- 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systems15 Aug
Other references · 25
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
- 2016Concrete Problems in AI Safetycited by 1,642
- 2024The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discoverycited by 1,071
- 2018MnasNet: Platform-Aware Neural Architecture Search for Mobilecited by 943
- 2025AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discoverycited by 867
- 2023FrugalGPT: How to Use Large Language Models While Reducing Cost and Improving Performancecited by 853
- 2024RouteLLM: Learning to Route LLMs with Preference Datacited by 682
- 2018ProxylessNAS: Direct Neural Architecture Search on Target Task and Hardwarecited by 673
- 2025GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learningcited by 542
- 2018FBNet: Hardware-Aware Efficient ConvNet Design via Differentiable Neural Architecture Searchcited by 485
- 2022DS-1000: A Natural and Reliable Benchmark for Data Science Code Generationcited by 452
- 2022The Effects of Reward Misspecification: Mapping and Mitigating Misaligned Modelscited by 328
13 more
- 2026Meta-Harness: End-to-End Optimization of Model Harnessescited by 309
- 2023Self-Taught Optimizer (STOP): Recursively Self-Improving Code Generationcited by 148
- 2023The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platformcited by 118
- 2026Self-Harness: Harnesses That Improve Themselvescited by 107
- 2025AstaBench: Rigorous Benchmarking of AI Agents with a Scientific Research Suitecited by 53
- 2026EvoScientist: Towards Multi-Agent Evolving AI Scientists for End-to-End Scientific Discoverycited by 51
- 2026Rethinking the Evaluation of Harness Evolution for Agentscited by 48
- 2025Optimizing Model Selection for Compound AI Systemscited by 36
- 2025Heterogeneous Swarms: Jointly Optimizing Model Roles and Weights for Multi-LLM Systemscited by 23
- 2026HarnessForge: Joint Harness and Policy Evolution for Adaptive Agent Systemscited by 21
- 2026HARBOR: Automated Harness Optimizationcited by 11
- 2025Conformal Constrained Policy Optimization for Cost-Effective LLM Agentscited by 7
- 2025syftr: Pareto-Optimal Generative AIcited by 5
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