Xuan Song
Author directory2026
MetaGen: Self-Evolving Roles and Topologies for Multi-Agent LLM Reasoning
Yimeng Wang | Jiaxing Zhao | Hongbin Xie | Hexing Ma | Yuzhen Lei | Shuangxue Liu | Xuan Song | Zichen Zhang | Haoran Zhang
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
Yimeng Wang | Jiaxing Zhao | Hongbin Xie | Hexing Ma | Yuzhen Lei | Shuangxue Liu | Xuan Song | Zichen Zhang | Haoran Zhang
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
Large language models are increasingly deployed as multi-agent systems, where specialized roles communicate and collaborate through structured interactions to solve complex tasks that often exceed the capacity of a single agent. However, most existing systems still rely on a fixed role library and an execution-frozen interaction topology, a rigid design choice that frequently leads to task mismatch, prevents timely adaptation when new evidence emerges during reasoning, and further inflates inference cost. We introduce MetaGen, a framework that adapts both the role space and the collaboration topology at inference time, without updating base model weights. MetaGen generates and rewrites query-conditioned role specifications to maintain a controllable dynamic role pool, then instantiates a constrained execution graph around a minimal backbone. During execution, it iteratively updates role prompts and adjusts structural decisions using lightweight feedback signals. Experiments on code generation and multi-step reasoning benchmarks show that MetaGen improves the accuracy and cost tradeoff over strong multi-agent baselines.
RecToolBench: Benchmarking Recommendation-Specific Tool Orchestration under Fuzzy User Intent
Xiao Chen | Yicheng Zhao | Yingying Wu | Zhendong Chu | Changyi Ma | Qingsong Wen | Xuan Song
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
Xiao Chen | Yicheng Zhao | Yingying Wu | Zhendong Chu | Changyi Ma | Qingsong Wen | Xuan Song
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
Recent advances in agentic recommender systems are shifting recommender systems from passive filtering engines to instruction-following agents that use external tools to resolve user intent. However, existing benchmarks often assume explicit user intent, simplified tool environments, or isolated function calls, leaving realistic tool orchestration for recommendation underexplored. To bridge this gap, we propose RecToolBench, a Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based benchmark for evaluating tool-using recommender agents under fuzzy user instructions. RecToolBench contains more than 1,200 executable tasks across three recommendation domains, 13 MCP servers, and 32 tools, spanning single-tool calls, parallel tool calls, sequential tool chains, and hybrid tool orchestration. We construct RecToolBench with a scalable synthesize–fuzzify–judge pipeline that generates executable fuzzy recommendation tasks, and evaluates agent trajectories using rule-based execution checks and rubric-based LLM evaluation. Experiments on representative LLMs show that syntactically valid tool calls do not guarantee successful recommendations. Models struggle with semantic parameter grounding, multi-step evidence integration, and grounded final recommendations, especially as orchestration complexity increases. Our results identify tool orchestration under fuzzy user intent as a major bottleneck for agentic recommender systems. Our data and code are available at https://github.com/ShawnChenn/RecToolBench.