Large language models and AI agents have recently shown promise in automating software performance optimization, but existing approaches predominantly rely on local, syntax-driven code transformations. This limits their ability to reason about program behavior and capture whole system performance interactions. As modern software increasingly comprises interacting components - such as microservices, databases, and shared infrastructure - effective code optimization requires reasoning about program structure and system architecture beyond individual functions or files. This paper explores the feasibility of whole system optimization for microservices. We introduce a multi-agent framework that integrates control-flow and data-flow representations with architectural and cross-component dependency signals to support system-level performance reasoning. The proposed system is decomposed into coordinated agent roles - summarization, analysis, optimization, and verification - that collaboratively identify cross-cutting bottlenecks and construct multi-step optimization strategies spanning the software stack. We present a proof-of-concept on a microservice-based system that illustrates the effectiveness of our proposed framework, achieving a 36.58% improvement in throughput and a 27.81% reduction in average response time.
@article{arxiv.2603.14703,
title = {Beyond Local Code Optimization: Multi-Agent Reasoning for Software System Optimization},
author = {Huiyun Peng and Parth Vinod Patil and Antonio Zhong Qiu and George K. Thiruvathukal and James C. Davis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.14703},
year = {2026}
}