分角色分配模型能力,发现决策环节最该加大投入。
Think Big, Search Small: Where Capacity Matters in Hierarchical Search Agents?

- 将搜索任务拆分为调度、执行、回答三角色,分别测试能力影响。
- 调度能力提升使准确率提高11点,执行能力提升仅增2.6点。
- 用小模型执行+质量筛选训练,节省37%计算量仍保持高精度。
基于大语言模型的搜索代理常采用多代理架构,由主代理分解复杂问题并分发给并行子代理。现有系统通常用同一规模的模型承担所有角色,未明确能力应如何分配。本文将层级搜索分解为三个角色:负责任务分解的调度角色、负责检索与证据提取的执行角色,以及固定不变的回答生成角色。在五个多跳问答基准上,对调度和执行角色进行受控的能力扩展实验。结果表明:第一,角色分离优于单代理基线,精确匹配率(EM)从4.5提升至8.6;第二,能力敏感度不对称——调度模型扩增带来约11点的EM提升,而执行模型扩增仅提升约2.6点,揭示分解是关键瓶颈;第三,一个1.7B参数的执行器通过质量过滤轨迹蒸馏训练,达到前沿子代理的准确率,同时减少37%的子代理令牌消耗,推动了性能-效率权衡的帕累托前沿。结论建议:构建层级搜索代理时,应将能力集中于调度,缩小执行端规模而不牺牲准确率。代码已开源。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language model based search agents increasingly adopt multi-agent architectures in which a main agent decomposes a complex question into sub-queries and dispatches them to parallel sub-agents. However, existing systems instantiate all roles from a single model of identical scale, leaving open how model capacity should be distributed across roles. We factorize hierarchical search into three roles: a delegation role responsible for task decomposition, an execution role responsible for retrieval and evidence extraction, and an answer generation role held fixed as a confound control. We then conduct controlled capacity sweeps along the delegation and execution axes on five multi-hop QA benchmarks. The experiments yield three findings. First, role factorization consistently outperforms a single-agent baseline, improving exact match from 4.5 to 8.6 points across six model scales. Second, capacity sensitivity is asymmetric: scaling the delegation backbone improves EM by ~11 points, whereas scaling the execution sub-agent moves EM by only ~2.6 points, identifying decomposition as the capability bottleneck. Third, a 1.7B-parameter executor trained via quality-filtered trajectory distillation matches a frontier sub-agent in accuracy while consuming 37% fewer sub-agent tokens, advancing the Pareto frontier. These results suggest a concrete recipe for building hierarchical search agents: concentrate capacity at delegation and downsize execution without sacrificing accuracy. Our code is available at https://github.com/QinnanCai0115/role-factorized-search.
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