@inproceedings{soni-etal-2026-coding,
title = "Coding Agents with Multimodal Browsing are Generalist Problem Solvers",
author = "Soni, Aditya Bharat and
Li, Boxuan and
Wang, Xingyao and
Chen, Valerie and
Neubig, Graham",
editor = "Demberg, Vera and
Inui, Kentaro and
Marquez, Llu{\'i}s",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EACL} 2026",
month = mar,
year = "2026",
address = "Rabat, Morocco",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-eacl.318/",
pages = "6052--6069",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-386-9",
abstract = "Modern human labor is characterized by specialization; we train for years and develop particular tools that allow us to perform well across a variety of tasks. Similarly, specialized AI agents with task-specific tools or architectures often fail to generalize beyond their intended scope. In this work, we ask: *can agents achieve generalizability across diverse domains with a small, but well-chosen set of general tools?* We propose OpenHands-Versa, a single-agent system with a modest number of general tools like code execution, search engine, web browser and multimodal file viewer, for three practical domains: software engineering, deep research, and web browsing. Notably, OpenHands-Versa demonstrates superior or competitive performance over task-specific specialized agents on three challenging benchmarks: SWE-Bench Multimodal, GAIA, and The Agent Company, with absolute improvements in success rate of **9.1**, **1.3**, and **9.1** points, respectively. Thus, our *single-agent* system can achieve strong generalization indicating that specialist agents for these domains provide no practical benefit. Furthermore, we find that specialist multi-agent systems do not generalize beyond their intended scope. These findings establish OpenHands-Versa as a strong baseline for future research."
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<abstract>Modern human labor is characterized by specialization; we train for years and develop particular tools that allow us to perform well across a variety of tasks. Similarly, specialized AI agents with task-specific tools or architectures often fail to generalize beyond their intended scope. In this work, we ask: *can agents achieve generalizability across diverse domains with a small, but well-chosen set of general tools?* We propose OpenHands-Versa, a single-agent system with a modest number of general tools like code execution, search engine, web browser and multimodal file viewer, for three practical domains: software engineering, deep research, and web browsing. Notably, OpenHands-Versa demonstrates superior or competitive performance over task-specific specialized agents on three challenging benchmarks: SWE-Bench Multimodal, GAIA, and The Agent Company, with absolute improvements in success rate of **9.1**, **1.3**, and **9.1** points, respectively. Thus, our *single-agent* system can achieve strong generalization indicating that specialist agents for these domains provide no practical benefit. Furthermore, we find that specialist multi-agent systems do not generalize beyond their intended scope. These findings establish OpenHands-Versa as a strong baseline for future research.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Coding Agents with Multimodal Browsing are Generalist Problem Solvers
%A Soni, Aditya Bharat
%A Li, Boxuan
%A Wang, Xingyao
%A Chen, Valerie
%A Neubig, Graham
%Y Demberg, Vera
%Y Inui, Kentaro
%Y Marquez, Lluís
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Rabat, Morocco
%@ 979-8-89176-386-9
%F soni-etal-2026-coding
%X Modern human labor is characterized by specialization; we train for years and develop particular tools that allow us to perform well across a variety of tasks. Similarly, specialized AI agents with task-specific tools or architectures often fail to generalize beyond their intended scope. In this work, we ask: *can agents achieve generalizability across diverse domains with a small, but well-chosen set of general tools?* We propose OpenHands-Versa, a single-agent system with a modest number of general tools like code execution, search engine, web browser and multimodal file viewer, for three practical domains: software engineering, deep research, and web browsing. Notably, OpenHands-Versa demonstrates superior or competitive performance over task-specific specialized agents on three challenging benchmarks: SWE-Bench Multimodal, GAIA, and The Agent Company, with absolute improvements in success rate of **9.1**, **1.3**, and **9.1** points, respectively. Thus, our *single-agent* system can achieve strong generalization indicating that specialist agents for these domains provide no practical benefit. Furthermore, we find that specialist multi-agent systems do not generalize beyond their intended scope. These findings establish OpenHands-Versa as a strong baseline for future research.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-eacl.318/
%P 6052-6069
Markdown (Informal)
[Coding Agents with Multimodal Browsing are Generalist Problem Solvers](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-eacl.318/) (Soni et al., Findings 2026)
ACL