arXiv:2608.23848cs.AIcs.LG2026-08

让大模型在预算有限时更聪明地探索,提升搜索效率。

Exploit More, Explore Smarter for Budget-Constrained Agentic Search

  • 将扩展决策视为信息价值判断,动态决定何时分支。
  • 在多个任务中平均提升5.5%性能,且仅需单一配置。
  • 适合预算受限的大模型搜索场景,如代码生成与分子结构设计。

当大语言模型代理在评估成本高、生成需多次调用模型的条件下必须在小预算内优化候选时,便出现预算约束的智能体搜索问题。标准MCTS在此情形下分配预算不佳:低访问次数时探索奖励占主导,无前景的兄弟节点优先展开,分支与节点质量无关。本文提出ExTS,一种将扩展本身视为信息价值决策的树搜索策略。ExTS融合三项机制:判别性奖励塑造以区分得分分布狭窄的候选;随机虚拟子节点,基于父节点历史奖励估算创建新分支的价值;质量条件分支,仅当节点得分足以覆盖预算成本时才扩展。在提示词优化、代码生成、分子结构解析和智能体工作流优化任务中,ExTS表现优于或媲美任务特定基线,平均相对提升5.5%,且仅使用单一固定配置。此外,我们引入先导运行诊断方法,揭示不同预算约束搜索问题的结构性差异,既深化对问题空间的理解,也提供实际适配指导。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Budget-constrained agentic search arises when an LLM agent must refine candidates under a small evaluation budget, because validation is expensive, generation requires multiple model calls, or both. In this regime, standard MCTS allocates budget poorly: exploration bonuses dominate at low visit counts, unpromising siblings are expanded before promising chains can deepen, and branching is independent of node quality. We introduce ExTS, a tree-search policy that treats expansion itself as a value-of-information decision. ExTS combines three mechanisms: discriminative reward shaping to separate candidates under narrow score distributions, a stochastic virtual child that estimates the value of creating a new branch from the parent's reward history, and quality-conditioned branching that expands only when a node's score justifies the budget cost. Across prompt optimization, code generation, molecular structure elucidation, and agentic workflow optimization, ExTS is competitive with or improves over task-specific tree-search baselines, with an average relative gain of +5.5% using a single fixed configuration. We further introduce pilot-run diagnostics that characterize what makes budget-constrained agentic search problems structurally different from one another, providing both understanding of the problem space and practical guidance for adaptation.

智能体搜索大模型预算优化

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