# CodeLift: Your Test Suite Is Secretly a Dense SWE Curriculum

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17224 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17224/

## Key facts

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

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Software engineering coding agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/software-engineering-coding-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19348/) (2026)
- [GLM-5: from Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15763/) (2026)
- [Group-in-Group Policy Optimization for LLM Agent Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10978/) (2025)
- [R2E-Gym: Procedural Environments and Hybrid Verifiers for Scaling Open-Weights SWE Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07164/) (2025)
- [SWE-rebench: An Automated Pipeline for Task Collection and Decontaminated Evaluation of Software Engineering Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20411/) (2025)
- [MiMo: Unlocking the Reasoning Potential of Language Model -- From Pretraining to Posttraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07608/) (2025)
- [TreeRL: LLM Reinforcement Learning with On-Policy Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11902/) (2025)
- [Branching Policy Optimization: Sandbox-Native Language Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14171/) (2026)
- [Beyond Binary: Turning Partial Success into Dense Verifiable Rewards for Reinforcement Learning in Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03525/) (2026)
- [Exploring Pass-Rate Reward in Reinforcement Learning for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02944/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The pass-all-test binary reward has become a standard recipe for training software engineering agents, but its sparsity eliminates difference of partially correct patches. The test pass-rate is a natural alternative. However, we find that it is not a reliable indicator of patch quality. A functionality being tested can be covered by either one challenging test or one hundred trivial tests, where the majority might be already satisfied pass-to-pass tests. We introduce CodeLift, a reinforcement learning method that dynamically calibrates pass-rate rewards, turning the test suite into an adaptive curriculum. At each iteration, CodeLift groups tests that kill the same patches and patches that pass the same tests, then gives more weight to test groups that fewer patch groups pass. This reduces the impact of majority simple tests and focuses more on what is still challenging. Within each rollout, CodeLift applies the same scoring rule to repository snapshots, assigning credit to useful actions even when later ones introduce regressions. Experiments on SWE benchmarks show that CodeLift consistently improves pass@1/2/4/8 over binary and pass-rate baselines. Analyses show that CodeLift provides dense, stable learning signals and unlocks the inherent curriculum in the test suite.