English

Toward Architecture-Aware Evaluation Metrics for LLM Agents

Software Engineering 2026-01-28 v1

Abstract

LLM-based agents are becoming central to software engineering tasks, yet evaluating them remains fragmented and largely model-centric. Existing studies overlook how architectural components, such as planners, memory, and tool routers, shape agent behavior, limiting diagnostic power. We propose a lightweight, architecture-informed approach that links agent components to their observable behaviors and to the metrics capable of evaluating them. Our method clarifies what to measure and why, and we illustrate its application through real world agents, enabling more targeted, transparent, and actionable evaluation of LLM-based agents.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.19583,
  title  = {Toward Architecture-Aware Evaluation Metrics for LLM Agents},
  author = {Débora Souza and Patrícia Machado},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.19583},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted at CAIN 2026 (IEEE/ACM 5th International Conference on AI Engineering)

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:22:15.283Z