arXiv:2605.05980cs.AI2026-05被引 3

通过激活调控,解决代码生成智能体过思考和过操作问题。

TACT: Mitigating Overthinking and Overacting in Coding Agents via Activation Steering

论文配图:TACT: Mitigating Overthinking and Overacting in Coding Agents via Activation Steering
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用激活状态识别过思考、过操作等漂移行为
  • 在多个评测集上提升解决率5.8个百分点,减少26%求解步数
  • 适合构建稳定可靠的长程代码生成系统

当语言模型智能体处理复杂的软件工程任务时,常因长期轨迹导致性能下降,称为‘智能体漂移’。本文聚焦两种典型失效模式:过思考(反复推理已有信息)和过操作(未结合最新观察即调用工具)。提出TACT(通过激活调控实现思与行校准),在残差流中检测并缓解漂移。实验发现,不同行为阶段的隐藏状态可沿两条‘漂移轴’线性分离,从校准态指向各失效模式(AUC≈0.9)。测试时对每一步激活投影至这些轴并回拉至校准区。在SWE-bench Verified、Terminal-Bench 2.0和CLAW-Eval上,TACT显著优于基线,使Qwen3.5-27B平均解决率提升5.8个百分点,Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it提升4.8个百分点,求解步数最多减少26%。该研究将智能体漂移视为残差流中的可调控方向,为构建可靠长程智能体提供有效手段。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

When language model agents tackle complex software engineering tasks, they often degrade over long trajectories, which we define as *agent drift*. We focus on two recurring failure modes *overthinking* and *overacting*, i.e., where the agent repeatedly reasons over information it already has, and where it issues tool calls without integrating recent observations or acquiring new evidence. In this paper, we introduce TACT (Think-Act Calibration via activation Steering), to detect and mitigate agent drift in the residual stream before it surfaces as a behavioral failure. In specific, we label trajectory steps as overthinking, overacting, or calibrated, and find that their hidden states can separate linearly along two *drift axes*, pointing from calibrated behavior toward each failure mode (AUC $\approx$ 0.9). To mitigate agent drift, we project each step's activation onto these axes at test time and pull drifted ones back toward the calibrated region. Experiments show that TACT outperforms unsteered baselines across SWE-bench Verified, Terminal-Bench 2.0, and CLAW-Eval, lifting average resolve rate by $+5.8$ pp on Qwen3.5-27B and $+4.8$ pp on Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it while cutting steps-to-resolve by up to $26\%$. These gains frame agent drift as a steerable direction in the residual stream, and position TACT as a viable handle for reliable long-horizon agents.

代码生成智能体激活调控长程推理

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。