@inproceedings{wang-etal-2026-neuralfsm,
title = "{N}eural{FSM}: Adaptive Multi-Agent Coordination via Learning Finite-State Execution Policy",
author = "Wang, Jiye and
Wang, Yu and
Li, Jianbin and
Yang, Shiduo and
Guo, Kenan and
Zhao, Yuanhe",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1543/",
pages = "33414--33436",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "LLM-powered multi-agent systems (MAS) have demonstrated strong performance on complex tasks. However, most existing approaches still rely on hand-crafted communication protocols or automatically designed communication topologies, which generalize poorly across tasks. We introduce NeuralFSM, a state-driven framework that formulates multi-agent problem solving as a finite-state execution process. NeuralFSM learns both the state transition distribution and inter-agent communication weights from interaction traces using a Temporal Coordination Controller. Rather than prioritizing explicit structure generation, the proposed framework uses task context to modulate transition and routing decisions, enabling flexible coordination without manual protocol design. To improve robustness against noisy or adversarial agents, we incorporate graph regularization during training and apply trust-aware message attenuation at runtime. Experiments on diverse benchmarks show that NeuralFSM consistently outperforms prior baselines by an average margin of 6.74{\%}{--}19.39{\%}, while substantially reducing token consumption. Moreover, NeuralFSM exhibits strong inherent robustness, which is further enhanced by the protection layer, resulting in only a 1.82{\%} performance drop under attack."
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<abstract>LLM-powered multi-agent systems (MAS) have demonstrated strong performance on complex tasks. However, most existing approaches still rely on hand-crafted communication protocols or automatically designed communication topologies, which generalize poorly across tasks. We introduce NeuralFSM, a state-driven framework that formulates multi-agent problem solving as a finite-state execution process. NeuralFSM learns both the state transition distribution and inter-agent communication weights from interaction traces using a Temporal Coordination Controller. Rather than prioritizing explicit structure generation, the proposed framework uses task context to modulate transition and routing decisions, enabling flexible coordination without manual protocol design. To improve robustness against noisy or adversarial agents, we incorporate graph regularization during training and apply trust-aware message attenuation at runtime. Experiments on diverse benchmarks show that NeuralFSM consistently outperforms prior baselines by an average margin of 6.74%–19.39%, while substantially reducing token consumption. Moreover, NeuralFSM exhibits strong inherent robustness, which is further enhanced by the protection layer, resulting in only a 1.82% performance drop under attack.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T NeuralFSM: Adaptive Multi-Agent Coordination via Learning Finite-State Execution Policy
%A Wang, Jiye
%A Wang, Yu
%A Li, Jianbin
%A Yang, Shiduo
%A Guo, Kenan
%A Zhao, Yuanhe
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F wang-etal-2026-neuralfsm
%X LLM-powered multi-agent systems (MAS) have demonstrated strong performance on complex tasks. However, most existing approaches still rely on hand-crafted communication protocols or automatically designed communication topologies, which generalize poorly across tasks. We introduce NeuralFSM, a state-driven framework that formulates multi-agent problem solving as a finite-state execution process. NeuralFSM learns both the state transition distribution and inter-agent communication weights from interaction traces using a Temporal Coordination Controller. Rather than prioritizing explicit structure generation, the proposed framework uses task context to modulate transition and routing decisions, enabling flexible coordination without manual protocol design. To improve robustness against noisy or adversarial agents, we incorporate graph regularization during training and apply trust-aware message attenuation at runtime. Experiments on diverse benchmarks show that NeuralFSM consistently outperforms prior baselines by an average margin of 6.74%–19.39%, while substantially reducing token consumption. Moreover, NeuralFSM exhibits strong inherent robustness, which is further enhanced by the protection layer, resulting in only a 1.82% performance drop under attack.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1543/
%P 33414-33436
Markdown (Informal)
[NeuralFSM: Adaptive Multi-Agent Coordination via Learning Finite-State Execution Policy](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1543/) (Wang et al., ACL 2026)
ACL