Think Before You Speak: Enabling Training-Free Latent Communication Between Language Models
On the map: LLM reasoning → Test-time compute and efficient thinking also fits: Reasoning for agents, planning and code
Abstract (arXiv)
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in solving complex tasks in coding, mathematical logic, and iterative reasoning, especially by coordinating effectively within multi-agent systems (MAS). However, language agents traditionally communicate via text exchange, which introduces a bottleneck in information transfer and adds prefill latency for downstream agents. Recent work proposes that directly sharing the key-value (KV) cache between language models can enable efficient latent collaboration, entirely bypassing standard text-based communication. To enable latent communication between heterogeneous models of different sizes, prior work introduces trained fusion adapters for each model pair, which limits practical deployment. We introduce CacheFuse, a training-free method which demonstrates that augmenting a downstream model with an upstream model's KV cache using linear interpolation consistently enables superior performance than the standalone downstream model can achieve. We systematically analyze CacheFuse across four reasoning and knowledge benchmarks and demonstrate up to 8.6 percentage points higher accuracy compared to single-model baselines and up to 12.2x TTFT speedup compared to text-based communication in multi-model inference.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 10 of its 11 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2026.
Builds on
10 of 11 references.
References · 10
- 2020Scaling Laws for Neural Language Modelscited by 6,586
- 2018Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 4,886
- 2018Can a Suit of Armor Conduct Electricity? A New Dataset for Open Book Question Answeringcited by 2,164
- 2024CacheBlend: Fast Large Language Model Serving for RAG with Cached Knowledge Fusioncited by 223
- 2025Cache-to-Cache: Direct Semantic Communication Between Large Language Modelscited by 61
- 2025KVCOMM: Online Cross-context KV-cache Communication for Efficient LLM-based Multi-agent Systemscited by 40
- 2024DroidSpeak: KV Cache Sharing for Cross-LLM Communication and Multi-LLM Servingcited by 35
- 2026Multi-Agent Memory from a Computer Architecture Perspective: Visions and Challenges Aheadcited by 9
- 2026RelayCaching: Accelerating LLM Collaboration via Decoding KV Cache Reusecited by 8
- 2026Latent Cache Flow: Model-to-Model Communication Without Textcited by 8
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Latent Space Communication via K-V Cache Alignment
- 2025Latent Collaboration in Multi-Agent Systems
- 2026Task-Oriented Key-Layer KV Communication for Efficient Latent Multi-Agent Collaboration
- 2026Beyond tokens: a unified framework for latent communication in LLM-based multi-agent systems
- 2026LCGuard: Latent Communication Guard for Safe KV Sharing in Multi-Agent Systems
- 2025Direct Semantic Communication Between Large Language Models via Vector Translation
- 2026Learning to Communicate: Toward End-to-End Optimization of Multi-Agent Language Systems
- 2024Deliberation in Latent Space via Differentiable Cache Augmentation