English

From Laboratory to Real-World Applications: Benchmarking Agentic Code Reasoning at the Repository Level

Software Engineering 2026-05-05 v3 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

As large language models (LLMs) evolve into autonomous agents, evaluating repository-level reasoning, the ability to maintain logical consistency across massive, real-world, interdependent file systems, has become critical. Current benchmarks typically fluctuate between isolated code snippets and black-box evaluations. We present RepoReason, a white-box diagnostic benchmark centered on abductive assertion verification. To eliminate memorization while preserving authentic logical depth, we implement an execution-driven mutation framework that utilizes the environment as a semantic oracle to regenerate ground-truth states. Furthermore, we establish a fine-grained diagnostic system using dynamic program slicing, quantifying reasoning via three orthogonal metrics: ESVESV (reading load), MCLMCL (simulation depth), and DFIDFI (integration width). Comprehensive evaluations of frontier models (e.g., Claude-4.5-Sonnet, DeepSeek-v3.1-Terminus) reveal a prevalent aggregation deficit, where integration width serves as the primary cognitive bottleneck. Our findings provide granular white-box insights for optimizing the next generation of agentic software engineering.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.03731,
  title  = {From Laboratory to Real-World Applications: Benchmarking Agentic Code Reasoning at the Repository Level},
  author = {Jia Li and Yuxin Su and Michael R. Lyu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03731},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted by ACL 26 main

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:53:59.022Z