mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

One to More, More to One: Category-Aware Iterative Expert Training for Software Engineering Agents

arXiv 2609.23377 ↗First posted 20 Sep 2026cs.SE cs.CL cs.LGcited by 0

New in LLM agents and tool use; no direction yet. LLM agents and tool use

Abstract (arXiv)

Repository-level software engineering (SWE) comprises heterogeneous task categories, whose progress under pooled agentic reinforcement learning can be uneven: gains in some categories coincide with regressions in others, while aggregate resolution obscures these changes. Motivated by this category see-saw, we develop a category-aware expert-training and policy-integration framework. Executable task construction and SWE Labeler, an evidence-grounded multi-axis labeling system, organize the training pools. Initial category-specific RL improves average training success while leaving uneven instance-level progress, motivating explicit consolidation of successful behavior and policy-adaptive task selection. Same-origin category experts alternate long-horizon Agentic-miniRL with Refresh-Repair-Expand (RRE): the updated policy refreshes instance mastery, reuses its own verified successful trajectories for Repair SFT, and reselects tasks for further RL. Label-routed multi-teacher on-policy distillation (MOPD) consolidates the experts into one deployable student, with ReLU-gated reward extrapolation keeping only each teacher's improving direction over the reference. Expert training and policy integration require no external model to provide solution trajectories or action targets. We evaluate Pooled RL and Balanced RL, expert development, and single-model integration through aggregate and per-category resolution, the minimum category lift over each joint-RL baseline, and expert-gain recovery. The final MOPD policy achieves mean resolution of 58.04% on Pro-618 and 59.00% on SWE-bench Multilingual, improving over the base model by 5.39 and 2.78 percentage points, respectively.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 38 of its 62 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2026.

Builds on

38 of 62 references.

References · 38

  1. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  2. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineeringcited by 1,628
  3. 2022Editing Models with Task Arithmeticcited by 1,076
  4. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agentscited by 956
  5. 2023On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated Mistakescited by 840
  6. 2025Monitoring Reasoning Models for Misbehavior and the Risks of Promoting Obfuscationcited by 338
  7. 2024Training Software Engineering Agents and Verifiers with SWE-Gymcited by 300
  8. 2024AutoCodeRover: Autonomous Program Improvementcited by 272
  9. 2025SWE-smith: Scaling Data for Software Engineering Agentscited by 255
  10. 2024SWE-bench Multimodal: Do AI Systems Generalize to Visual Software Domains?cited by 196
  11. 2026On-Policy Context Distillation for Language Modelscited by 161
  12. 2026Learning beyond Teacher: Generalized On-Policy Distillation with Reward Extrapolationcited by 157
26 more
  1. 2025R2E-Gym: Procedural Environments and Hybrid Verifiers for Scaling Open-Weights SWE Agentscited by 140
  2. 2025SWE-rebench: An Automated Pipeline for Task Collection and Decontaminated Evaluation of Software Engineering Agentscited by 127
  3. 2024Branch-Train-MiX: Mixing Expert LLMs into a Mixture-of-Experts LLMcited by 106
  4. 2025Reinforcement Learning Optimization for Large-Scale Learning: An Efficient and User-Friendly Scaling Librarycited by 94
  5. 2025SWE-Fixer: Training Open-Source LLMs for Effective and Efficient GitHub Issue Resolutioncited by 87
  6. 2025SEC-bench: Automated Benchmarking of LLM Agents on Real-World Software Security Taskscited by 69
  7. 2024SUPER: Evaluating Agents on Setting Up and Executing Tasks from Research Repositoriescited by 52
  8. 2025The SWE-Bench Illusion: When State-of-the-Art LLMs Remember Instead of Reasoncited by 47
  9. 2025Training Long-Context, Multi-Turn Software Engineering Agents with Reinforcement Learningcited by 34
  10. 2026SWE-Lego: Pushing the Limits of Supervised Fine-tuning for Software Issue Resolvingcited by 30
  11. 2025Let It Flow: Agentic Crafting on Rock and Roll, Building the ROME Model within an Open Agentic Learning Ecosystemcited by 28
  12. 2026SpecBench: Measuring Reward Hacking in Long-Horizon Coding Agentscited by 25
  13. 2025GSO: Challenging Software Optimization Tasks for Evaluating SWE-Agentscited by 24
  14. 2025SWE-Dev: Building Software Engineering Agents with Training and Inference Scalingcited by 24
  15. 2025Skywork-SWE: Unveiling Data Scaling Laws for Software Engineering in LLMscited by 24
  16. 2026SWE-rebench V2: Language-Agnostic SWE Task Collection at Scalecited by 24
  17. 2025A Comedy of Estimators: On KL Regularization in RL Training of LLMscited by 18
  18. 2026SWE-Master: Unleashing the Potential of Software Engineering Agents via Post-Trainingcited by 18
  19. 2025Rethinking KL Regularization in RLHF: From Value Estimation to Gradient Optimizationcited by 14
  20. 2026Open-MOPD: Diagnosing and Fixing Capability Imbalance in Multi-Teacher On-Policy Distillationcited by 12
  21. 2026Automated Benchmark Auditing for AI Agents and Large Language Modelscited by 10
  22. 2025IDEAL: Data Equilibrium Adaptation for Multi-Capability Language Model Alignmentcited by 8
  23. 2026From SWE-ZERO to SWE-HERO: Execution-free to Execution-based Fine-tuning for Software Engineering Agentscited by 5
  24. 2026On Training Large Language Models for Long-Horizon Tasks: An Empirical Study of Horizon Lengthcited by 5
  25. 2026Auditing Reward Hackability in Code RL Training Environmentscited by 3
  26. 2026Self-Improving Large Language Models via Progressive Experience Evolutioncited by 2

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  1. 2026SWE-Prot'eg'e: Learning to Selectively Collaborate With an Expert Unlocks Small Language Models as Software Engineering Agents
  2. 2025Agent-RLVR: Training Software Engineering Agents via Guidance and Environment Rewards
  3. 2026FC-SWE: Failure-Conditioned RL for Long-Horizon Software Engineering Agents
  4. 2026Yet Even Less Is Even Better For Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding LLMs
  5. 2025From Knowledge to Noise: CTIM-Rover and the Pitfalls of Episodic Memory in Software Engineering Agents
  6. 2026Socratic-SWE: Self-Evolving Coding Agents via Trace-Derived Agent Skills
  7. 2026Agents That Teach: Towards Designing Incidental Learning Back into AI-Assisted Software Development
  8. 2026SWE-MiniSandbox: Container-Free Reinforcement Learning for Building Software Engineering Agents